‘METONYMY’
LCC SOUND ARTS GROUP SHOW
BA SOUND ARTS YEAR 2 students present new sound installation works
Thursday 23rd JANUARY – 2nd February 2025
OPENING
THURSDAY 30TH JANUARY
6.00 – 9.30 pm
Friday 31 January
12 – 4 pm – Exhibition
PERFORMANCES
6 – 7.30 pm – Decks DJ
7.10 – 7.40 pm – Davina
7.50 – 8.20 pm – Vanity Crystal (Vic S Porter) Live
8.30 – 9.00 pm – Sounbloke Big Band (Jack P + Jack C) Live
9.10 – 10.00 pm – Ruben + Fergus DJ
Saturday 1 February
12pm-6pm
Sunday 2 February
12-6pm
Dates
Exhibition Dates
30th January – 2nd February 2025
OPENING
Thursday 30th January 2025
6.00 – 9.30pm
Tuesday – Saturday
1 – 6pm
Sunday
1 – 5pm
Please check instagram for any changes
CLOSED
Monday
Artists
Kit Beaufoy
Ruben Bell-Antonio
Minsoo Chang
Jack Gavey
Yutang Gong
Tal Lilburn-Quick
Jack Palmer
Victoria S. Porter
Mouse Purbrick
Fergus Robinson
Jerome Sharpe
Patrick Shaw
Wendi Shen
Moyan Tan
Cameron Tanaka
Cora Zhang
1. Ruben Bell-Antonio
The piece “PERCEPTION” is an interactive sound installation that is inspired by a live show that provides a vest for deaf communities to dance with the music. By feeling the vibration from the vest, they were able to “feel” the beats. The Deaf and Hard of Hearing community has 430 million members. My perspective on the usage of music and sound was completely altered by this invention, which inspired me to make an immersive sound installation for this community.
Two ends of the room are joined by several threads controlled by machines. The beats, melody, tempo, and other elements will lead the threads to begin moving like waves once the sound work begins. Since there is no music playing until the audience puts on headphones, this seems to be a live picture from a distance. But when audiences interact with the threads, they are able to observe and perceive the sound work like how 430 million members did. We can analyze and interpret the music and sound around us using a variety of senses, and still feel and appreciate the sound in different ways even if we are unable to hear it. Additionally, audiences could engage with the installation the second time with headphones to observe the differences in perceptions.
‘Pale Blue Sky’
Sound environment for wall noise artist Arboreal, celebrating the use of static textures to simulate natural environments & use of natural environment recordings to simulate the static textures. This work is a celebration of the wall noise scene and the direction in which its development has taken over the past 20 years or so, and the use of the medium as a kind of impressionistic, near pastoral practice of detox, voluntary isolation, and mediation. The pseud-natural environment created fixes a static sound within an ever-changing space, filling the space where silence would be to create interactions between the “wall” and the sounds happening outside of it, and allowing for the wall to create a space of its own when listened to, the visible simplicity of the sound’s creation leaning into the genre’s/Arboreal’s aesthetic of cheap escapism.
4. Patrick Shaw
‘Steward’
a collation of works needing doing
solitary field chores
trudging about
the tree in the chimney
Steward is a black and white digital short film with accompanying minimalist sound collage, concerning the gathering of firewood; The base act of felling, cutting up and splitting a storm-downed birch to heat the home. Where my preceding ethnographic artwork examined workplace politics and manual labour, this tangential project exists on an altogether more solitary plane. I draw out an interrelatedness between rurality, necessary physical labour, agrarian land stewardship, fallible masculinity, privilege, pride and error.
In the unflattering, ordinary winter light work continues. Insistently, I use blunt hand tools; doggedly focused on the performance of hard work, however erroneous.
‘Her Story’
Her Story is the work that explores the lives of local Tanzanian women, their invisible struggles, and the generational cycles of hardship that shape their existence.
Through a combination of sculptural form, water circulation, and video projection, the piece speaks to the intersection of tradition, suffering, resilience, and the silenced narratives of women in a context of societal and cultural challenges.
The sculpture, which features African-inspired clay masks, serves as both an aesthetic and symbolic representation of these women. The addition of a water circulation system within the sculpture’s structure, alongside the black-and-white projections of local women’s silhouettes, creates a poignant dialogue about cycles – of both life and suffering – hat transcend generations. Her Story seeks to shed light on these experiences, elevate the voices of these women, and challenge viewers to reflect on both the past and the present.
Existence and Temporality is a work that questions “What is existence?” by exploring human perception of existence through the lens of temporality. Drawing on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, the piece distinguishes between ordinary time and authentic time. Ordinary time is the physical, homogeneous time constructed by humans based on the motion of photons, used to establish rules and systems. In contrast, authentic time refers to the temporal framework through which humans perceive their existence, divided into past, present, and future. It is not an objective measure but a construct enabling self-awareness.
According to Heidegger, the past reflects the choices and experiences one has accumulated, the present signifies the possibilities one is currently realizing, and the future embodies the possibilities one seeks to achieve, ultimately leading to the recognition of one’s mortality. This work metaphorically represents sound as human existence: past sounds reflect traces of past actions, present sounds represent the act of creation, and future sounds symbolize potential yet unrealized.
By engaging with these temporal layers, the audience, positioned as creators, actively explore their understanding of existence and temporality. The piece invites introspection on the fleeting nature of time and how self-awareness emerges through temporal experiences.
Forms of Various Perspective refracts sound into five distinct spectral hues and examines their relationality with one another and the space around them. An illusion of acoustic perspective is created within the work; sound appears to move on a three-dimensional plane and emerge from beneath its surface, seemingly enlivening the inanimate.
With its sounding, resonant frequencies ring, and harmonics dance above a mirage of space and materiality.
‘It Plays Itself For £40 – or – Sacrificial Vessel Which Flows Only When Money Is Introduced’ is a reconstructed snare drum installed with a handmade speaker using a 72mm x 39mm Y30BH ferrite ring magnet and conducive copper foil, connected to a piezo microphone. The microphone’s high sensitivity responds to its surroundings, creating a constantly shifting feedback loop.
An inversion of previous 8-channel spatial sound piece “The Arrhythmic Conception of Music (for Milford Graves)”, the work presents themes of improvisation, musical un-skill and what Stuart Schrader would coin as “shit-fi”. An itemised list of the cost of the installation’s individual elements is displayed in line with the £40 technical budget assigned to each individual artist. Reported in UAL’s Report and Financial Statements 31 July 2024, UAL generated £466.0m of income (2023: £425.4m) of which, >80% comes from tuition fees.
Attendees are invited to touch (and therefore play) the instrument in whatever way they wish.
Light, mirrors and sound combine to depict the feedback between self, surroundings and the ever-present cycles of nature.
10. Cameron Tanaka
‘ACHINEGUTSINTERFACE’
2005 MITSUBISHI COLT CZT MK6 1.5 TURBO LEATHER STEERING WHEEL. TWISTED HEMP ROPE. CONTACT MICROPHONE. PAVOTUBE 30C II. ABLETON. DESIGNED TO EXPOSE THE LIMINALITY OF PROJECTED PLEASURE INTO NON-HUMAN ENTITIES. MACHINE RELICS HOLD ECHOES OF ACCUMULATED DESIRE, FANTASY, PLEASURE, AND PAIN. THE FIRST MOMENT OF CONTACT WITH MACHINE CONTROL IS PURE POTENTIALITY. IT IS A STREAM OF ENERGY THAT IS OMNIPRESENT AND FOREVER OUT OF OUR REACH.
11. Fergus Robinson
50-page A4 photobook with accompanying sound piece.
12. Tal Lilburn-Quick
Pale Reflections is a tactile sound sculpture inviting visitors to engage with the work through touch — please be gentle.
Drawing inspiration from the intergenerational bonds between women and the primordial stage of life, Pale Reflections explores connection, heritage, consciousness and oblivion.
Life begins in a pool of water. Five months before our mothers are born, the first sign of us is formed, an egg is formed. We exist in this pool with an unknown fate, this is when we first experience the reflections of our circumstances. Though we do not experience continuousness in this state, we still experience this state.
Reflections refer to ancestral bonds that transcend time, life, and sentience, manifesting as the reflections of each other we see within ourselves. As we connect with these reflections, we communicate with those who came before us.
In an action to understand my next life I must begin to understand what it means to be a tree and all that comes with the enormity of that privilege. In the quest for comprehending the life of a tree, I start with the exterior, its leaves. I believe them to be one of the many mouths of a tree. In a constant conversation with the wind and all that reside close enough to hear its chatter, only to go dormant once the equinox wheel turns to autumn once again.
14. Moyan Tan
‘Sonic Acupuncture’
This project is an interactive sound installation inspired by Chinese acupuncture, where different acupoints stimulate specific effects on the body. The sculpture, modeled as a human head, appears understated—a simple object at first glance. However, it houses a built-in microphone and speaker that capture and replay audience sounds, allowing interaction through buttons placed on acupuncture points to apply various audio effects.
Rooted in Buddhist philosophy and personal spiritual practice, the installation explores the idea that our perception of the world is a reflection of our inner state. Drawing from Herta Müller’s notion that facts are shaped by the narrator, the piece invites audiences to reflect on how their actions and emotions shape their experience of reality. Subtle yet thought-provoking, the work encourages quiet introspection while blending ancient wisdom with contemporary sound art.
What kind of beauty might we discover when we experience the most natural and intuitive resonance with machines and with other people? Through ‘The Veiled Ensemble of Ours’, we may find a answer. It is an interactive piece that convert sounds picked up by microphones—whether human voices or various other sounds—into the timbres of orchestral instruments in real-time. Each microphone is fixed to correspond to a specific instrument. The audience will act as both composer and performer, collaborating to form a ‘miniature orchestra’.
Information
GALLERY46 hosts a collaborative group exhibition created by BA (Hons) Sound Arts students from the London College of Communication, University of Arts London.
In linguistic terms, metonymy is the substitution of one thing for another closely related concept—an idea or object evoked through association. In this exhibition, students have chosen the notion of “metonym” to explore how sound can mediate indirect relations that shape our environment, bodies, and experiences. This manifests in these sound works in a variety of ways; the artists use sound as a medium that embodies and translates the texture of our habitats or the experience of our existence in complex ways.
The works in METONYMY explore a vast array of themes: from rurality and imagined aural spaces, to noise, labour and immersive rave environments, from the quiet vibrations of acupuncture to the speculative “post-death machine.” The exhibition brings together works that investigate auditory phenomena from sociological and physical standpoints, from the feedback and vibrational traces to evocatively composed and staged field recordings. These sonic explorations expand on themes such as our relationship to our environments, the delicate nature of habitats, and the intertwined histories of women, exploring how sound can express intergenerational bonds and the experience of time. The works range from sonic sculptures and mixed-media installations, a photobook, interactive and audio-only works, offering diverse methods of listening and immersion. Whether experienced through headphones, speakers, multichannel installations, or through physical interactions with objects, METONYMY invites audiences to engage with the texture and vibration of sound on an embodied level.
A performance evening on Friday 26 January will feature both solo and collaborative performances that bring some of these themes to life in live sound art and experimental music.
