AC4: Music for Air Conditioners is an immersive multichannel sound installation, integrating four air conditioners into a droning, harmonious soundscape with programmed oscillators. As global warming makes air conditioners a necessity rather than a luxury, the air conditioner has become a paradoxical symbol of respite and destruction. AC4: Music for Air Conditioners explores this paradox through long form, deep-listening compositions – exploiting our brains’ ability to filter out background noise while repurposing the ignored ambience of daily life into music. Four air conditioners are placed throughout the gallery space, accompanied by four speakers arrayed in a circle. Oscillators and air-conditioners are tuned, in-concert to the resonant frequencies of the space to create a series of long form, non-linear compositions that explore our relationship to time and space. Blurring the lines between rhythm, tone and perception, AC4 journeys through our subconsciousness and the surreal of our domestic world – exposing a profound, meditative, resonant soundscape beneath the surface.
∆ John Shin, also known as Oriental Rugs, is a composer and sound designer based in Chicago, IL. His work uses synthesis and acoustics to explore how sound shapes our interior and exterior worlds. Working predominantly with Buchla synthesizers and Max/MSP programming, his music creates ambient soundscapes influenced by minimalism, drone, krautrock, noise, avant-garde and 80’s-90’s cinema scores. His latest album Ghost Dad 2020 is a new original score to the 1990 Bill Cosby film Ghost Dad, reimagined as a Lynchian style horror film. He received an MFA in Sonic Arts from CUNY Brooklyn College in 2023.
Orientalrugs.bandcamp.com
john-shin.com
Opening September 19, 2024
7p-10p
Donations welcome
Viewing during events and by appointment through October 19.
Tritriangle
1550 N Milwaukee Ave Fl3
Chicago, IL 60622