Download Resonare/In Absentia: listening to a museum

Resonare/In Absentia: listening to a museum exhibition
Neil Curtis and Bill Thompson
No longer are museums silent temples to the past. Hands on activities, oral history
recordings and sound effects are increasingly bringing an aural dimension to many museum
displays. While these approaches can bring alternative perspectives into the interpretation of
objects, many also aim to give a greater verisimilitude to reconstructions and dioramas
(Angliss, 2005). A recent installation in Marischal Museum, University of Aberdeen,
Resonare/In Absentia by Bill Thompson challenges some of these approaches and contributes
to the critique of museum exhibitions.
Resonare/In Absentia is a sound installation adjacent to the display of ancient Greek pottery
bequeathed to the museum in 1863. The red-figure and black-figure pottery largely derives
from 5th and 4th century BC tombs in Greece and southern Italy and is a particularly fine
collection of pottery that was associated with high status wine drinking. A highlight of the
display is a red-figure kylix (drinking cup) depicting young men drinking at a symposion with
their property at their feet depicted in black. Alongside shoes and pots is a black slave. This
is particularly striking; even more so when it is realised that the 19th century collector,
Alexander Henderson, derived his wealth from a plantation in Jamaica (Pennington, 2004)
and would have known the black ‘servant’ his father was famous for having in his
Aberdeenshire home. Henderson’s Enlightenment interest in ancient Greece cannot therefore
be separated from his interest in wine (he wrote a well-regarded history of wine) or his
dependence on slavery. This cup is a beautiful example of an object that shows the place that
classical Greek art has played in the self-conception of Western elites and the formation of
museums. It is also a useful reminder that the Enlightenment origins of museums took place
at a time when owning slaves was as acceptable as owning a collection of antiquities.
As part of the University of Aberdeen, Marischal Museum has a policy of encouraging the
use of the collection for teaching and research. Like many museums it has also been
considering ways of incorporating into the exhibitions the multiple meanings that objects
engender. As most of these approaches involve textual or artistic comments, the opportunity
of working with sound artists therefore offered an intriguing additional perspective. As most
of the pots on display were used during ‘symposions’, gatherings of men for drinking,
conversation and music, an obvious approach would have been to reconstruct the music that
was played over 2000 years ago. Instead, Bill Thompson, composer, sound artist, and postgraduate student in the University, decided to focus on the resonance that dwells within each
vase, building a multiple cd/speaker installation that combines these delicate hums and
whispers. With the intention of focusing on the untreated and un-manipulated resonances,
miniature microphones were carefully dipped within the centre of each vase to keep physical
contact to a minimum. Subsequently, the recordings were edited to create some 122 tracks
played in random combinations over two sets of stereo speakers. It is therefore unlikely that
the same sound will be heard by any visitor more than once, just as every encounter with an
object is unique. The work was premiered during the Discoveries XXIII concert which was
held in the museum on 12th May 2005 and continued to be played throughout the summer.
The title of the work, Resonare/In Absentia highlights its attempt to give voice to the
resonance that has quietly reflected the sounds around them since they came into existence.
Such sounds have included the conversation and music played at a symposion, the sounds of a
funeral when the pots were buried and the long silence while they lay underground as well as
the sounds since their discovery in the 19th century. Some listeners have commented on the
appropriateness of the ghostly quality of the work, noting the pots association with death and
loss and the idea that they are fragments of the past.
Bill Thompson was keen to avoid misappropriating the identity and meanings of the pots and
to metaphorically ‘leave no fingerprints’ by focusing on the untreated and un-manipulated
resonances. However, when editing the source recordings, minuscule unintentional sounds
made during recording became apparent. Instead of removing these soundsthey were
incorporated into the installation as a reminder that, even with the best intentions, it is
impossible to avoid leaving some traces when making a record - an idea of current debate in
both the humanities and quantum physics.
Reviewing Resonare/In Absentia and the rest of the Discoveries XXIII concert, Cooper
(2005) wondered,
“Does much of this music appeal to that part of the brain that appreciates sculpture or
painting more than to the part that appreciates music? Are these composers taking us
back to the very dawning of music, in manipulating raw sound sources rather than
instruments, or are they taking us on a journey way into the future by teaching us to
become far more sensitive in our response to sound itself. So far, I have not made up
my mind.”
How often do visitors of museum exhibtions leave with such questions? Going far beyond a
desire for the reconsruction of music in the past, one of the strengths of this installation is the
way that it combines technical recording and creative production, raising questions about
both. Concentrating on an aspect of the pots that is not visible and so not susceptible to
conventional measurement, recording resonance offers an equally valid form of record with
its own notation schemes, limitations and potential.
Much current debate in musuems focuses on a contrast between the traditional comparitive
approach exemplified by the displays of the British Museum in which, for example, “the
distinctly Greek aesthetic of (Greek sculpture) appears all the more strongly as the result of
their being seen and studied in direct proximity to products of other great civilizations”
(ICOM, 2004) and the rights of indigenous people to the repatriation and control of access of
objects in museums. Neither approach adequately addresses the specifics of individual
objects, avoiding both the connections between people that objects can reveal and a critique
of museum practice (Curtis, 2005). Alongside Resonare/In Absentia bringing another voice
into an exhibition and enriching our understanding of particular objects, it explicitly reminds
visitors of the other voices that have spoken about the pots, the impossibility of creating a
single valid interpretation and the potential for exhibiting creativity in museums.
References
Angliss, S (2005) ‘Sound and Vision’, Museums Journal Vol. 105 No. 7, July 2005, pp. 2629
Cooper, A (2005) Discoveries XXIII Electroacoustic museum un the museum: critic’s review
[http://www.abdn.ac.uk/universitymusic/reviews.shtml#discoveriesxxxiii, accessed
04/08/2005]
Curtis, NGW (2005) ‘A continuous process of reinterpretation’: the challenge of the universal
and rational museum, Public Archaeology Vol. 4 Part 1, pp.50-56
ICOM (2004) ‘Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museum’ ICOM News,
Vol 57 No 1, p4 [http://icom.museum/universal.html, accessed 05/08/2005]
Pennington, C (2004) ‘Henderson, Alexander Farquharson (1779/80-1863)’, Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/12901, accessed 05/08/2005]