Modal gallery Autumn exhibition: Sound Pressure

Modal gallery at Manchester Metropolitan University is pleased to present Sound Pressure, a group exhibition featuring immersive artworks, music/sound compilations, and critical texts that explore the agency of sound systems.

Featured artists

AUDINT, DeForrest Brown Jnr. Kristen Gallerneaux, Lawrence Abu Hamden, S Ayesha Hameed, Christina Kubisch, Nik Novak, Demdike Stare, Dave Tompkins, Sophie Trudeau - Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Flora Yin-Wong and Samson Young.

About the exhibition

The exhibition aims to question how speaker systems exert pressure on us physically, psychologically and socially. It investigates how the transmission of sonic, infrasonic (below the hearing range), and ultrasonic (above the hearing range) frequencies are habitually perceived as beneficial for the production of entertainment and pleasure, the dissemination of public information, and the use of domestic, medical, and public frequency-based technologies.

A relationship has been advanced with the routine use of speakers and sound systems to modulate our emotional states, alert people to life-threatening dangers, and reveal the internal workings of the body. But what happens when such technologies are called into service for other, more insidious, purposes? When waveformed pressure is developed and released at the behest of agendas of affective influence, programmed manipulation, and, ultimately, political torture?

Sound Pressure is a transdisciplinary and transhistorical exhibition that occupies four large-scale quadrilateral structures, painted in the signature colour of ‘international orange’, echoing the design of aviation black box recorders to create a cohesive, highly visual motif. Each structure hosts a trio of contributions: on the external façade, fly posters with commissioned texts alongside music playlists accessed via a listening station; and internally, immersive artworks comprised of moving-image, sound, sculptures and digital artworks. Ultimately, Sound Pressure presents works that focus on a range of sound systems along with their attendant techniques, agendas and spatialities in order to question how perceptions of duress, compression and provocation are coming to redefine notions of pressure.

Curators

Matt Williams, Valentino Catricalà and Toby Heys.

Visit us

You can find Modal gallery on the ground floor of the School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University. The exhibition will be open Monday - Friday from 11:00am - 5:00pm. Join us for a public preview of the exhibition on Friday 25 October 2024, 5:00-8:00pm.