Finding Artists: Soundescape by Auburn Isaak

Auburn Isaak is a musician as well as an artist. Lately, her work has taken an interest in the possibilities of what we hear but cannot see and if we could see them, how would we perceive them? Presently her work is displayed in the Nightingale Gallery exhibition called Concinnity. All of her works touch on this interest in visual waveforms. I first learned of her interests in another art class as she made a concept study of what would become her senior exhibition. It is a small waveform made of beads and Popsicle sticks hanging from the ceiling in the hall with the art lockers in Loso. A direct light would shine upon it to cast a clear and distinct shadow against the wall, mimicking the sound wave. I was not surprised to see her simple project expanded into a series of serious artworks for the exhibition.

Her sculpture in the gallery, titled Soundescape, I found not only the most striking of her work but also best fits the gallery’s exhibition name. It begins with a mirror-topped table roughly three feet tall. Upon the table are eleven tower-like stoneware sculptures. Isaak’s forms identify with the dictionary definition of sound wave, “a wave of compression and rarefaction, by which sound is propagated in an elastic medium such as air.” She accomplished this in a manner that causes each ring of material in the sculptures to appear compressed together. Another way she successfully created the waveform is by illustrating its rarefaction – a term that describes a reduction in a sound wave’s density. In this case, these figures possess varying circumferences, as the ridged material grows larger then smaller, and then larger again preventing a true conical shape.

All forms are white except for two. One of those exceptions is a medium-dark shade of gray while the other is not only bright red, but is a smooth triangle. However, the descriptions thus far give an incomplete understanding of Soundescape.

As previously noted, the sculptures stand on a mirror. The choice of the mirror is the key to the purpose of the shapes. As stated earlier, the dictionary describes sound waves as something that propagates through an elastic medium. Naturally, mirrors reflect. They do not propagate light in the manner that sound is propagated. However, because of the nature of these sculpted forms placed directly on the mirror causes an illusion of transmission. In other words, the reflected light transforms them from somewhat cone-shaped structures into waveforms, which to hover in space.

The concinnity of Isaak’s waveforms is obvious. Isaak placed these forms on the mirror with deliberation. It is clear that placement of each form is representational of harmony in sound. In music, for example, to have harmony is to produce chords with a pleasing effect on the ear. In visualizing sound, we are to have that pleasing effect on the eye. As Isaak would arrange her fingers on a piano to play a chord or chord progression, she meticulously placed her sculptures on the mirror. Once placed, the mirror completes the images to produce the chord.

The difference in color between the gray wave and the red wave remind me of counterpoint in music. A counterpoint is when two melodies, which sound different separately and work independently, but harmonize when played together. The white waves could be considered a melody on treble clef and the gray and red waves are a melody on base. In the sound editing business, particularly in Digital Audio Workflows, sound can be ‘visualized’ in a two dimensional fashion. Isaak has taken that further into the three dimensional world, not only creating the wave forms compression and rarefaction in their basic shape, but also of their propagation through the mirror, working harmoniously as music should.