When you think of sound as an art form, music comes to mind first, but for much of the 20th century some visual artists have included sound in their works.
"Sound Full" which opens at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery on Saturday is an exhibition of works by contemporary Australian and New Zealand artists in which sound is an essential feature.
The history of sound as part of visual artworks goes back at least to Futurism in Italy around World War 1. The Futurists used noise machines to challenge their audience about what they perceived as a pure art experience, but since the advent of phonographs, tapes and loops and now digital equipment, more contemporary artists have been exploring it. They are interested in shifting the boundaries of art and also thinking differently about how you experience it, according to Aaron Kreisler, who has co-curated the exhibition with Australian academic Caleb Kelly.
"There's an interesting relationship between Australia and New Zealand practitioners. A lot of them travel and a lot of discussion goes back and forwards," Kreisler says.
Unusually, all the artists will be present at the opening weekend, which will be filled with performances and opportunities to meet them. Other projects may come out of their interaction, he says.
The 12 works in the exhibition use sound in different ways, showing how practitioners work across disciplines. They are related to, but different from music, noise and performance in that they are made to be shown in a gallery.
Sometimes the actual sound may be absent, although the work itself may be full of "noise". Kreisler points to Marco Fusinato's huge photograph, Double Infinitive 2, on the Big Wall, which although it has no aural sound accompanying it, is full of noise. Blown up from a newspaper photograph, it depicts a youth throwing a brick in a riot and riots are full of noise. But from close up it appears abstract and full of dots, seductive even, he says.
"Not everything has a visual component but there is a visualisation created by our aural experience. There is crossover because a lot of these practitioners have worked in performance, which is why we are hosting a performance weekend as part of the show because we want people to have quite a different experience of these artists' work."
However, galleries are not designed as spaces for displaying aural works.
"They usually have hard surfaces. The notion of the contemporary white cube is about visual experience. Usually the spaces are quite open so there is sound bleed.
Sound and noise is a difficult substance - it's like an odour and hard to contain, so that's part of the challenge for us as an institution.
It's the most difficult thing we have to deal with, how people's works rub up or flow over into each other," Kreisler says.
Most of the works will be in the Trust Bank galleries on the first floor, in which new rooms have been built to contain the sound bleed.
Nevertheless, until the exhibition is up and the sounds are turned up, they won't know how they will bounce off each other, he says.
One of the works, New Zealand-born, Sydney-based Brent Grayburn's Flicker, references Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness in which a man travels up an African river to meet another man.
It is abstracted in how the footage links up and has four screens that you cannot see all at once.
"It's incredibly seductive but it also has that Gothic New Zealandness although it hasn't been shot here ... People will be mesmerised by it and sound is an important component. There are moments when one of the characters is going up the river in a jet boat which is silent, so you almost read the audio into it - you become aware of all your senses, " Kreisler says.
Another work, Monocline: White Cube, by Australians David Haines and Joyce Hinterding, is a re-examination of something they made a few years ago.
"It's a piece where you have this strange image of a person putting their hand into this blue and white microcosmic world - essentially they've created this immersive landscape with surround sound and two projections. In the original version you navigated through this virtual world with a kind of gaming console but in this they've taken it a step further and you navigate through the landscape with your body so there's this interesting relationship with your physical presence and this regenerated landscape."
It works with a technology used in gaming which films you and makes a trace of your body shape and when you move in certain ways it becomes a navigational tool. Probably young people will know this technology but it will be a learning experience for others, he says.
"You'll have intimate experiences, experiences where you watch other people interacting with the works, and there will be ones where you just want to spend time by yourself," he says.
"The notion of sound itself expands and shifts our ideas about what we can experience in art galleries."
• Caleb Kelly is a lecturer at the University of Sydney, and an event director and curator who works in the area of the sound arts. Aaron Kreisler is the curator at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
See it, hear it
"Sound Full: Sound in contemporary Australian and New Zealand art", curated by Caleb Kelly and Aaron Kreisler, is at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery from July 7 until November 11. It is the first of the gallery's annual "visiting scholar" exhibitions involving internationally recognised academics.
