Robin Minard , --> bio, --> web
Silent Music is a sound installation designed for public environments or art gallery spaces in which the public is free to move about. Numerous small high-frequency loudspeakers are installed on the walls of the space. Together with their attached wires the loudspeakers form plant-like structures, placed within the space to suggest either their seeking of light or their preference for lighted areas.
The work broadcasts high, relatively quiet sounds made up of a mixture of natural and synthetic sources. Just as this aural experience presents a mixture of natural and synthetic elements, so does the visual. Although the installation is composed solely of speakers and speaker wire, these are placed in a manner which suggests life, growth and movement toward light.
Sounds of the installation are designed to lightly colour the silence of the existing space. The work inhabits the space in much the same way as a living organism, while at the same time projecting the observer back and forth between perceptions of the familiar and the unfamiliar: between that which we perceive as being natural and alive, and that which we perceive as being technical and artificial.
Previous presentations of the work have included: Alte Schmiede, Vienna, July 1994; Helpoort, Maastricht September 1994 (within "Multiple Sounds II"); Warsaw Centre of Contemporary Art, September 1995 (within the "Warsaw Autumn Festival"); Mathematische Fachbibliothek der TU Berlin, November 1995 (within "Klangfenster '95"); Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven, March/April, 1996 (within the one-person show "Silent Music"); daadgalerie Berlin, August/September 1996 (within "Sonambiente"); Gallery MUU, Helsinki, September 1996 (within "Sounds from Elsewhere"); Galerie Rähnitzgasse, Dresden, October/November 1996 (within "Idee und Idylle"); Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, October 1997 (within the 1997 World Music Days); Centre des Nouveaux Médias, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, July to December 1998;
was born in Montreal in 1953. He studied music composition in Canada and Paris. Since 1984 a major part of his work has focused on creating sound installations for public environments. From 1992 to 1996 he was lecturer on the subject of sound installation art at the electroacoustic studio of the Berlin Technical University. In 1995 he was guest composer and lecturer at the Institute for Electronic Music in Graz, Austria. From 1988-89 he resided in Paris at the Canada Council studio for musicians and in 1990 was guest of the DAAD artist program in Berlin. In 1991 he was a resident artist on the theme of virtual reality at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada. He has published several articles on the subject of sound installation and in 1993 his book Sound Environments / Klangwelten was published by the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Since 1997 he has been professor for electroacoustic composition and sound design at the Hochschule für Musik "Franz Liszt" and the Bauhaus University, Weimar.