About the Exhibition:
VARIANTOLOGY OF SOUND is the first exhibition in the series. Basis for the series is media archaeology studies by Andrey Smirnov and audio works created by artists studying at the Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia. The recurrent theme running through the exhibition is the art of sound viewed from the perspective of media archaeology and cultural variantology based on Michel Foucault’s philosophy (‘The Archaeology of Knowledge’) that calls to mind inevitable leaps and gaps in the evolution of culture. The purpose of media archaeology is to find ‘forms and tactics of seeing the future’ in ‘informational trash’ of the past.
The exhibition space includes the archives of music technology and research findings represented by the restored ‘Sound Crystallizer’ (1939) created by forgotten inventor Khavkin and ‘crystallizing the music of phenomena surrounding us every second of every day.’ The crystallizer was brushed off by experts and was never actually created while the author was still alive. It seemed like a completely impossible example of musical experimentalism in the age of social realism that predated John Cage’s concept of ‘found sound’ and many works by his legendary disciple Alvin Lucier.
For the first time ever, the school will have the octophonic ‘Sound Gallery’ with the retrospective exhibition of acousmatic art created by students of Andrey Smirnov’s course ‘Sound for the Advanced.’ The brand-new Sound Lab of the Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia produced works in a multichannel format specifically for the exhibition.
Coordinators: Maria Molokova and Vassily Sumin