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Sound Tunnel

SOUND TUNNEL (1968)

 


Created in modules of 4’ each module has 20 speakers. Since the work is done in a series of modules, it can be expanded in any four-foot increment.
Minimum length- 8’ Maximum length- 40+’

Exhibitions
Los Angeles Municipal Art Galery, Los Angeles, CA, 1968
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 1970

Description
”Imagine you walk into a long corridor it is dark and very quiet. As you walk down the corridor a mass of sound passes through your body. The sound is coming through a series of speakers in the walls, ceiling and floor. The speakers are hidden. The notion is that sometimes the ears have primary perception and that the mind can discern a form, even though it is just made of sound. “
-Eric Orr

”You walk into a long 40-foot hallway-like space. It could be a corridor and it is very silent. As you walk along with the space a mass of sound starts at one end and passes through the body. A word floats by and disappears. Another word spirals down the corridor. The sound seems omnipresent. You are walking down a space that has two hundred speakers hidden in the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. The space is anechoic. The work was conceived as a space where the viewer could sense the presence of sound as an object.”
-Eric Orr

“Eric Orr, a sculptor, was my mentor when I was very young. He worked as a teacher at the Barnsdall Junior Arts Center and then created this project called ‘The Sound Tunnel’ in the 1960s. That is when everything was wild and wacky and he wanted to create sculpture through the movement of sound. The idea was that you would go into a tunnel and the sound would move all around you and you would see a sculptural image.
-Leslie Shatz, Sound Designer, Interview with the L.A. Times, 2005.