New York’s Museum of Modern Art is highlighting sound art with an interactive online exhibition titled “Sound Machines.” The exhibition presents five artworks that utilize new technologies to create imaginative sonic experiences.
MOMA collaborated with Feral File, the digital art platform that is designed by and for artists, for the new show. Each of the five featured works is part of a series of 30 which will be minted on Ethereum and available for auction beginning March 14.
One of the pieces in the show is Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s Cancel Yourself (2024), a choose-your-own-adventure experience that forces the user to audibly announce a moral failing and suffer being “canceled.”
In a setting involving glitches and gifs that resemble ‘90s HTML, audience members move through a simulation of publicly outing themselves with a soundtrack that shifts throughout the narrative. For example, users hear distorted moans as they scroll through the backlash, and autotuned acapella vocals are featured as users post their apology music videos.
Another piece titled Play from Memory (2024) by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst revives the imitation games that Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman invented in the 1920s to teach children music. This exhibit uses machine learning models to create a soundscape and accompanying image featuring prodigious children and their instruments.
Yoko Ono revives her Sound Piece V (1996) with a new twist. The original poem reads, “Tape the sounds of friends laughing together,” and the new exhibit allows participants to add their recordings to the work, creating “an ever-evolving archive of sound.”
0xDEAFBEEF reflects on the phone card as a predecessor to the digitized token, with plans to attach live call-and-response performances to his images of imaginary phone cards.
Integrity Protocol/Lower Limb Lecture (2023/24) by American Artist and Tommy Martinez runs through a generative interface and allows users to play mixer by manipulating the pitch, speed, delay, and feedback.
Participating artists will receive 60 percent of the proceeds, with the remainder being split between Feral File and MoMA.
