PROJECT DARK
Sonic Boom - Hayward Gallery South Bank London SE1 England - 27 April -18 June 2000
In an age of mobile phones, in-car sound-systems, digital broadcasting and celebrity DJs, sound and audio technology play an ever increasing role in contemporary life. Sound - the carrier of words, music and noise - is the subject of Sonic Boom, an exhibition in which the experience of sound in space is given a new spin by the installations and actions of sound artists such as Brian Eno, Pan Sonic, Ryoji Ikeda, Angela Bulloch, John Oswald, Christian Marclay, Lee Renaldo (of Sonic Youth), Project Dark and Scanner. Curated by David Toop, Sonic Boom takes 1990s post-techno, post-rave, post-ambient sound art out of a restrictive club context and liberates it in a gallery environment. The largest group exhibition of sound art ever staged in this country, Sonic Boom fills the Hayward with a series of sound installations in which the visitor encounters the mechanical and the organic, the electronic and the acoustic, the sculptural and the intangible. The exhibition creates both subtle and intense sensory experiences, offering a soundscape for the imagination.