Sound art 🎨
How to make audio for art galleries
So much of producing narrative audio seems to be geared towards building a clear structure and giving our listeners a specific perspective. Making more abstract audio, outside the confines of journalism, gives us an opportunity to instead leave listeners with a feeling.
Katie Semro makes sound art that blends interviews, sound design and music, and has collaborated with visual artists and galleries.
The composer and performer was invited to make a piece for Sound Scene, an interactive sound festival in Washington DC. The event stages multi-sensory art installations including sculptural and headphone-based exhibits, and is hosted by the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Sound Scene is now accepting submissions for its 2024 edition under the theme ‘solstice’ – with a deadline of 22 December.
What drew you to making sound art?
I always love a challenge and I really loved the idea of creating something that didn’t need to fit into any particular structure. As art, sound does not have to follow a narrative arc, or have a character, or have a linear structure, or worry about intelligibility… It’s a very freeing idea.
What did you make for Sound Scene?
The theme for Sound Scene for 2022 was Trust. When I read about the Fest I thought it sounded amazing, but wasn’t coming up with any ideas. Then one day an idea came to me. It turned out to be the very last day for submitting applications so I rushed to figure out the details and get my application in.
What I created was an installation called "Trust me, I’m a Doctor.” I have an autoimmune disease and have had bad experiences with doctors. I knew a lot of other women had similar stories, and I wanted to highlight this experience with an ironic take on the phrase “Trust me, I’m a Doctor.” So I put a call out on some Facebook groups and through some contacts, and I got six women who have autoimmune diseases to tell me their stories of how their doctors had not helped them.
For the installation, I created a layered two channel piece with voices and sounds. The idea was to capture the sense of overwhelm the women felt when their doctors weren’t helping, rather than the details of each person’s story. I did use a lot of their stories, but I could focus on creating a particular feeling and experience rather than telling a good story. And for me that was a big moment. Up until this point I had seen myself as a documentarian. Someone who worked to tell a story in a way that highlighted the person’s experience without an agenda. But in this piece, I wanted to make a point. I wanted people to feel something in particular and I used the audio to create that feeling.
The physical installation was created with some partition walls that the Hirshhorn provided, a two channel stereo system that I brought with me, and images I created on Canva and had printed on canvas to hang on the walls. People walked into the hallway-like space and heard the audio coming from both sides.
How was working in this way different to producing narrative audio or sound designing a podcast?
Not having to worry about documenting a story was really different. I was using the audio in a way that felt more like using puzzle pieces. Not to say that I ignored people’s stories! But it was really trying to evoke something rather than document. And I’m glad to say that it worked. So many people came through and told me how powerful it was, or told me their stories of the same thing happening. And the contributors were all happy with it too. One even got to come along in person and experience it.
What are the challenges involved in making work that an audience member experiences live?
There are lots! And mostly I had no idea what they were beforehand. First, the Hirshhorn is donut shaped, so the walls are all curved and there aren’t that many rooms. I had originally thought of this installation as being in a room that was made up to look like a doctor’s office. People would come in, hear the stories, and leave. But there aren’t really rooms at the museum, so that had to be changed. (The Sound Scene and Hirshhorn staff were great at helping me figure out a new way to present it!).
I also learned that people don’t want to stop and listen for too long. My piece was 12 minutes long. It could have been two. A lot of people just walked through, so they maybe got 20 seconds? Many stopped and listened, but very very few gave it 12 minutes.
Looking at other exhibits and talking with other artists I learned a few things. If you use headphones people will stay longer, but there’s a greater barrier to entry — they have to choose to put the headphones on. If there’s something else — like an object to touch — people will be drawn in more. If there’s something to actively do, people will love it. There were always lines for the exhibit where you put on a cape and bone-sensing headphones that circled around another person to hear their bones (okay you weren’t hearing their bones, but it was some kind of sensor, and it was really cool)! Also, people need to be told what to do — step over here, put these headphones on. Signage is good!
The museum is free, people are out for a nice day out. They aren’t necessarily big audiophiles (although they might be!), so they aren’t necessarily going to commit to a long listen. You have to grab their attention.
Tell us about partnering with visual / contemporary artists. What is it like to work with folks from other mediums?
Last year I created a couple of audio pieces for two visual artists. They had a gallery exhibition in Boston and asked me to make audioscapes to accompany the exhibition. So for each of them, I combined their stories of themselves as artists and stories of these particular works with original music and sound design to create two short pieces that I installed in the gallery to be motion triggered (something I learned about from an artist at Sound Scene, but could not have executed without my electrical engineer cousin’s help!). The artists were really happy with the audio pieces, and they even got mentioned when the exhibit was reviewed in the Boston Globe.
Working with the two artists was really wonderful. They are very happy positive people and they were really so happy to have this audio documenting their work. It was very emotional for them actually.
Where do you get your ideas? What are some themes you're interested in?
Sometimes ideas come from a prompt, like for Sound Scene. But otherwise, right now I’ve been working with ideas around intangible losses (like in my EP, Gone).
In my performance work I’m looking at the ebb and flow of life — the highs and lows of our psychological states as well as the flow of energy in the natural world.
I’m also working on an album where I’m still tracing some losses, but adding in other strands like the many layers of reality and the line where order is a bad thing and chaos becomes a good thing.
All of the works Katie mentioned can be found on her website.
Training and awards
❄️ New Voices Amplify ~ 8-week marketing accelerator for independent creators ~ 20 February - 11 April; deadline to apply 8 December
❄️ Getting the most out of Reaper ~ online Audiotrain class ~15 December
❄️ Webby Awards ~ entry deadline 15 December
❄️ David Carr Scholarship to attend the Power of Narrative conference ~ application review begins 1 January
❄️ One World Media awards ~ submissions open between 4 January and 8 February
Jobs
🎄Story Scout ~ Snap Judgment / Spooked ~ remote
🎄Senior Audio Producer ~ New York Times ~ New York or Washington DC
🎄 Audio Producer ~ AMA ~ London
🎄Podcast Associate Producer ~ WHYY ~ Philadelphia, PA
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