Jingle

A group exhibition curated by Andrew Harwood

2nd, 3rd, and 4th Floors

July 15 to Aug 27, 2006
12pm to 5pm Daily

OPENING RECEPTION 7PM TO 9PM JULY 14, 2006

Patricia Aldridge, Amy Bowles, Katie Bethune-Leamen, Cecilia Berkovic, John Caffery, Keith Cole, Chris Curerri, Michael Comeau, Pete Dako, Fastwürms, Sadko Hadzihasanovic, Luis Jacob, Melissa Levin, Scott McEwan, John McLahclin, Allyson Mitchell, Will Munro, Andrew J. Paterson, Lisa Pereira, R. M. Vaughan, Natalie Wood

Jingle is a group show about artists' personal relationships to music and their visual affairs of the ears. Computer technology has provided people a much more individual interaction with the songs they love. Gone are the days of the mixed cassette tape that could have marked the end of a relationship, the sharing of "cool" tunes between friends or just recordings of a person's favourite music. Everything now, is on-line and instant. I have occasionally overheard friends lamenting the loss of the mixed tape with the advent of the burnt cd. Skipping your friend's gifts of songs, especially the lesser favs, has never been so easy. Sending songs via email means, "I never have to listen to what you're listening to", in favour of the delete button. The general population can now also produce their own music at home and send it to their friends and e-communities; skipping the recording companies all together: p2p. While this is not exactly news, it marks a profound sociological shift in the perceptions of celebrity, music production and technological creativity. Personally I love mixed cds that friends give me and really listen to the songs that are not necessarily my most favourite.

Through the advent of successive generations of music tech, people miss - not only the music lost with these devices but, also the accompanying quality of sounds produced by them. There are audiophiles who even miss the hissing noise of the 8-track, djs still salivate over the warmth of vinyl while others enjoy the hard-edged sound of a digital file. Will people mourn the crisp sound of the cd when the music chips are inserted in our bodies?

In a pluralistic and technologically based society there is no one true musical sound for our age. The same logic applies to art. The artists in Jingle have strong connections to music through being bands, production, composition, sampling, djing, karaoke, lip-synching, sound design, experimental music or produce art that has major musical overtones (pun intended). Jingle examines these sight and sound relationships.

The bond between art and music is a long-standing one, with many historical creative movements, especially in 19 th and 20 th century.   These movements often have had manifestos and/or musical scores that show the correlation between artistic and musical ideologies; Dada and Jazz are prime examples of this special link. More recently it appears that our love affair with all things nostalgic and vintage means that artists and musicians have been both listening to music from the preceding four decades and further back and, also investigating the visual aesthetics of these eras as well. Some seem to be clearly referencing certain musical movemnts while others are playing with different decades' sounds in the style of dance floor remixes and the more current "mash-up".   In mash-ups, one can hear Karen Carpenter singing "Mr. Postman" alarmingly and humourously mixed with a Pussy Cat Dolls song, cleverly arranged by the musician Juelz Santana. Some music will never die via the sound collage/sampling.

In the future - how will historians describe this time period musically and artistically?   Perhaps they will say that we were romantic because we still loved vinyl.

Andrew Harwood 2006

"Music is the new anti-intellectualism." - Andrew J. Paterson 2006