Rebecca Gates

Robert Rice

Hi Rebecca! We went through and we looked at some of your works and talks you gave. In your work as an artist, you talked a lot about the human voice listening space. So how do you think we can use the voice as a tool? What do you think architects have to learn from that? How can architects use the human voice as a tool to create?

Rebecca Gates

That is a great question. One of the things that I like about voice is that it can take so many forms: not only in terms of forms of the human voice, but in terms of like a storytelling voice, or a voice of an instrument……I always tend to scale out when answering this kind of question.

However, one of the things that's interesting and I don't know about (because I’m not an architect) is considering users of voices, just like clients for architects. What would the user be like? If it is voice: is it a collective voice, or if it is a single voice? It’s a different input into a space that would then have to be addressed in a design.

I do also think that there are ways that just sound, in general, is not considered, unless it's a sound-specific place like a theater or a hospital. And even in hospitals, it's not often considered: How about starting with, sound? I like the idea that the voice can have a real perspective, whether it's aesthetic or whether it's content.

Robert Rice

In the Marfa series, you were describing very particular spaces using soundscapes as a tool. One of them was a hair salon where people could hear all these ladies gasping…

Rebecca Gates

There's that I would listen to that sound piece. There wasn't a hair salo piece. But one of the things that I liked doing as someone who is a sound space maker(I need a better name for what I do) is to think about just the architecture for listening.

I was related to what you just said that was in the Marfa show there's an artist named Inigo Mangani Laval, and he did a video piece of a bullet slowed down and he gave us the audio. When it slowed down, it sounds a lot like what you just heard a bit ago was raining, that kind of quality to it. Where we installed it was out in a county park, using a system of speakers that were old and that were just out there for like square dancing and like counting city dances. Thus, you had to be in one spot to actually hear the piece, but we didn't tell anyone where that spot was. So people would just go out there. Sometimes if someone had a sonic learner, they'd look up and be like, “Oh, there are four speakers”, “Oh, well, they're pointing here like”, “I should stand here” or “maybe I'll go to the bandshell and see if I can get some reflected sound” and people would come back and be like: “I couldn't hear the piece but I just sat there and listened to the Go-Karts forever. it was so cool” or “there were these birds…” People come back to the gallery with these descriptions of the piece that they love that had nothing to do with the actual sound and I really loved that. Every once in a while someone will be like: “I was just walking; it was really quiet and then I heard this crazy sound” because they have walked to the sweet spot where it was and then they like kind of just like found their way into it. So I personally love that where it's just people start filling in and just listening. Yeah, but there's also one that we did was Darla Robledo, where we just had napkins, So it’s basically to experience the peace you had to go to a bar and just those were the cocktail napkins...So that was, that was like the hair salon.

Robert Rice

That's cool. Our second question was, from listening to your lecture in going to the workshop just now, we know you believe strongly in the ability of sound as a tool to do lots of different things. Where do you think the limits of sound as a tool lie? Because you know, every tool has limits.

Rebecca Gates

That's also a great question. We live in, you know, a multiverse. Even in terms of doing sound art, part of one of the things is like Sound is unseen; you need a way to translate it. So that's something that actually in terms of limits that I come up against that challenge. I don't like headphones or how we listen to sound a lot. I think that sound should be it's great to hear it in your bones. So there’s a lot of different ways that could translate sound as material into other viewers. There's a lot of answers to that question already, but I still feel like it gets stuck at that point a lot. I don't know if it's just because it's a newer medium, or if it's because of the medium itself. But I think that it's interesting to suddenly start going from this thing that I feel like is very expansive and responsive and then have it suddenly hit this wall where it's limited. That's something that I think about a lot.

And I haven't really turned it's interesting to hear the question because, well, what would that mean for an architect? What other elements of design? What would that mean for a painter like do they get a certain point where they're like “Oh, I wish the canvas was 3D”?

Robert Rice

It's absolutely true. Sometimes we hit a wall and drawing doesn't do it anymore. We have to switch to a model or something else or vice versa.

Rebecca Gates

Yeah. So I think I should always tell people to jump through different paradigms like: “Oh I should think about it that way too!” I'm actually really trying to do a lot more material studies for myself, just to have to find some of that vocabulary that we're using sounds and material and then also, perhaps some different solutions for how to share an experience that isn't just like headphones or speakers or, you know, a spatial way.

Yanan Zhou

So my question is, what do you think of the difference between visual art and sound art? Because we have lines, structures, and hues to contribute to a design, but how does sound art contribute to that?

Rebecca Gates

That's a great question too, thank you. It's like sound study is a new, pretty new discipline, like 100 years old. So I think that's still being developed; there's a lot of vocabulary are still being developed. And even like, what conversation I was having with a student is thinking about how to use sound as a texture and not bring it into a narrative structure. As someone who isn't a visual artist a couple of ideas even come to mind if we were trying to answer that question with visuals. That's one reason it's really fascinating is that there's a lot it's become as a discipline a lot more robust over the last 10 years. Especially at this really nice place where those questions are going to start to be answered more readily.

I think sound really translates scale really well. In this way, you can go from very intimate to bombastic if you think about the different environments that it lives in. I think that that nimbleness is super interesting, and I haven't really ever tried to correlate that with buildings’ scale for sure, but with actual visual arts.

Yanan Zhou

I think it's just like what we did in the workshop when I was standing in the middle of the hallway like all of the sounds echoed so the sounds are all blurring. I can't hear you very clearly. So I think maybe like there's some connection between the visualization of sound and how it speaks of the volume of the hallway to me. it's really interesting.

Rebecca Gates

I love that. And I think you could draw that.

Yanan Zhou

I think it's very inspiring. Thank you for speaking of that point.

Rebecca Gates

Cool. There's actually a file on my computer that's just musical score, or just graphic scores, which is different because that's usually coming from more of a compositional element as opposed to like a descriptive visual of something which is super interesting.

Robert Rice

Cool. That's all the questions we had. Thank you.

Rebecca Gates

Those are some good ones. Thank you.

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