WAR-BEAU: SONIC//STORM
War-Beau Sonic//Storm is an investigation of time, synchronicity and the chaos of communication that seeks to engender a feeling of calm within an all-enveloping sea of sound. The exhibition comprises of over 300 digital alarm clocks placed in rows at thirteen different heights, each of which is programmed to play a different sonic work at carefully choreographed moments in time.
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The artist’s intention is to utterly saturate what he refers to as the ‘eternal space’ in sound so there is no point of silence, only varying undulating sonic waves that slowly become tones upon which the audience can drift. Some of the alarm clocks are programmed to play for a substantial amount of time, while others play sound works that run for no longer than two or three seconds, but all of them are programmed in order to maintain an eight hour period of ever-changing eternal tones.
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The CD alarm clocks employed by the artist in War-Beau: Sonic//Storm are all of the cheap, ubiquitous variety sold in budget stores all over the world. These mundane and often quickly discarded items all emanate the internationally recognised LCD display of digital red numbers, and the alignment of them in rows within an almost pitch-black space gives the viewer the impression of being in the presence of thirteen different glowing red horizon lines. These sonic lines skew the viewer’s perception of time and space: upon this glowing ocean of sound one minute can seem to last four minutes, while four minutes can seem to last only thirty seconds.
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The show incorporates over 1,000 samples and 300 specifically created soundworks, all of which are perfectly choreographed so that the experience is one of a symphony. Running constantly at the centre of this symphony is the Metoyer’s celebrated sound piece ‘Medicine For A Nightmare’. For Metoyer, War-Beau: Sonic//Storm provides that viewer with the aural apparatus they need to experience time travel: at any given moment they may be hearing Martin Luther King’s speech and the sound of the Twin Towers crashing to the earth; Mozart’s Magic Flute and an interview with punk-poet Saul Williams; an argument in a war zone and a couple having a conversation at a dinner table Upper Manhattan; a dog barking in the darkness of a long, cold night and the sound of children playing upon the shores of the Mediterranean.
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Ultimately, Metoyer envisages the War-Beau: Sonic//Storm exhibition as a bittersweet sonic pill: a melange of perfectly choreographed sounds that will never sound the same twice. In this way, he is seeking to delineate the eternal tones fundamental to the sine waves that form the framework of the aural matrix that surrounds us, some of which the viewer will become aware as the sounds drift gently through from the higher and mid-levels of the exhibition. At the heart of the reasoning behind War-Beau: Sonic/Storm is the way in which the individual’s experience dislocated of chaos, time and even the cacophony of war can be calming, and perhaps even comforting: the sonic medicine for a global nightmare.
