Raymond Gervais (b. 1946, Canada)
The Theatre of Sound, 1997

This is an addition to my collection of conceptual/non-cochlear sound art. I have not experienced the work myself, I only have found a reference to it in an anthology and have ordered an exhibition catalogue that used to be a library book somewhere in America and that is estimated to take a couple of months to arrive.

But then again… if it is a non-cochlear sound piece, if it is just an installation referencing sound without actually sounding anything… perhaps I could state that I have experienced it by just having been made aware of it through text and limited photographic evidence? Somehow this idea of referencing sound without sound has made its way to my awareness and made me to put it on this blog. I certainly cannot distinguish all the titles on the CD:s covers included, thus some content gets lost along the way – but do I ever absorb “all” the information that an artwork makes available to me, even if it is a painting that I am looking at IRL. And in conceptual art – as long as I get the overall concept, I kind of experience it to some extent. An insight that may open new possibilities for how I communicate my concepts…

Otherwise, this work does relate to my “Sound Piece” consisting of a projection of a pdf file with a text outlining my failed – yet thought-provoking – attempt to make a sound recording in a gallery. And as I am fooling around with various translations between sound, text and imagery, Gervais – who supposedly has been focused on that interplay – may turn out pertinent to my practice at large once that used library book arrives. So yes, this entry deserves to be here.