Sound Art | Mike Hansen Artist

Sound Art

Installations, Sculptures, Objects, Drawings

Paradox Box Set 2019
(a study in musique concréte)

Paradox is a five-record handcrafted box set in a limited edition of 10. Each box set contains four hand-cast playable concrete stereo 10”, 33rpm singles and one hand- lathed vinyl 10” stereo EP of all four compositions- Paradox 1-4.

Rock and a Hard Place 2019 (digital study)

Rock and a Hard Place is a participatory sound installation that compels participants to pass through a throng of live electric guitars. This is a reflection of my experiences of crowded spaces. Rock and a Hard Place shares with the participant my own ordeals of the physical interactions in a crush of people that is found in locations such as: busy streets, public transit and shopping malls, Instead of the inevitable frustration found in these situations my sound installation creates music.
Each guitar is attached to both an effects pedal (delay or fuzz or distortion, etc.) and a amplifier (as illustrated in this digital study). The instruments are suspended from the ceiling of the location by large springs. The springs allow the guitars to move freely as people walk through them. When the participant’s make contact with the guitars, the instruments react to this interaction causing them to bounce, tap the participant as well as each other causing a noise backlash, bringing fourth my own under the breath curses from my encounters with others in overcrowded locations. .
The Rock and a Hard Place installation’s guitars are to be placed closely together in a thru fare that viewers must pass through to reach another location. As they pass through this multitude of guitars participates are forced to interact with the instruments creating accidental, improvised compositions that continually vary as others walk through. The sounds escalate as the guitars bounce, swing and vibrate from the contact.
The crush of the crowd is an experience that can be said is an everyday occurrence. The crowd can also be a metaphor for life’s trials where these experiences forces each of us to deal with the situations that surround as well as the everyday tribulations. Rock and a Hard Place generates empathetic communication between participants creating a site of self-examination as well as collective relations.

Strum 2018

Strum is part of an ongoing examination of my own desire to be a musician. I find that I can be lazy and don’t want or have the time to master an instrument. My solution is to create an instrument that plays itself.

Strum is a participatory sound installation that examines music improvisation through the idea of a self-playing guitar. Strum invites the participant to strum or pluck the strings of guitar. The vibrations from this initial contact cause a feedback loop through a speaker placed in the sound hole of the acoustic guitar. The vibrations cause a guitar pick placed on the speaker below the strings to hit the strings in a random or improvised form. The playing constantly evolves as the bass feedback through the speaker forces the object placed on it to bounce against the strings in unpredictable ways. This action from the strum propels the guitar to self improvise thus composing and performing simultaneously.

Silence 2017

Silence examines sound through a medium that is designed to store sound. Using three blank vinyl records, Silence reverses the medium of the record album through the exploration of the idea of the sounds between the sounds, silence.

The Unknowing Self 2016 (The Humble Inquiry Series)

The Unknowing Self is a multi-channel video installation, presents a conversation through the randomness of sound utilizing the spatiality of noise and the virtuosity of improvised music.

The Unknowing Self brings forth a conversation through the lens of an improving percussion quartet. The quartet is derived by using video of the artist creating a variety of unique extended musical techniques with a series of cymbals.

The Unknowing Self 2016 (Life Sized Screen Installation Proposal)

Whispher 2015 (installation view)
(The Humble Inquiry Series)

Whisper, examines the love song as a an intimate conversation, which in most instances is designed to go public. This photographic installation takes away the voice of the conversation instead seeing the love song as a contemplative expression through images of the conversations creation.

Telling 2015 (The Humble Inquiry Series)

Telling examines the act of the conversation where the participants refuse to listen. In this work the voices speak over one another, not relaying information in terms of an emphatic conversation but one of dissonance.

ConFab 2016 (The Humble Inquiry Series)

ConFab is a sound and video installation that puts the observer on the throne, the drum throne as a witness to a group conversation. This conceptual investigation of the conversation continues my series of works revolving around Ed Schein’s scholarly tome, Humble Inquiry, a study of the art of the conversation. The Humble Inquiry series of works examines the art of the conversation sans utterance or without human voice. This series of my work examines conversation by the means of noise via experimental, improvised sounds or silence. ConFab uses the notion of the drum solo as a representation of a group conversation. Could the objects in the kit and their relationship to each other create a tête-a-tête?

Ursonata Choir 2012

Ursonata Choir Nuit Blanche-Dada Reboot,Nuit Blanche 2012- The Distillery, Toronto

A choir style recital of Kurt Schwitters' famous dadaist nonsense poem The Ursonata. The installation consists of a following the bouncing ball projection of the Ursonata text and participants are invited to perform the poem in front of a series of microphones. The text is projected on the wall and the participants face it as they recite the poem.

Musica Ficta 2012

Musica Ficta, is a participatory sound installation, where participants are invited to draw on score paper with a Theremin Pencil and then touch the lines they have completed with a finger and again with the pencil. The second touch allows to participant to create music from the pencil line and the Theremin Pencil. How the pencil touches the line controls the pitch and oscillation of the sounds generated.

Gnothi Seaton( Know Thy Self ) 2012

Gnothi Seauton is an examination of the Ekho myth interpolated with Karlheinz Stockhausen’s never fulfilled project, Tunnel Spiral.

Thundering Hoof 2011

As a child I would read stories about giants, the tomes were filled with descriptions of their size, appetite and the sounds that followed their movements. The sounds created by the fall of the giant’s boots as they touched or slammed into the ground. The stories always seem to revolve around a chase, the giant pursuing our normal sized heroes. The work I’m proposing examines the sounds produced by the walk or the run of the giant. Now we are not giants, at least in our own eyes or ears, but to a woodland creature or an insect we become that behemoth.

The Bus Project Installation Mosaic Festival 2009

Each seat will have a couple of conversations cut and repeated. Each CD will have be approximately 10mins long and then looped. I feel this length will make it that no one will hear the same conversation twice. At this time I have the sounds of South Asians, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, English and various one sided conversations from cell phone calls I was able to intercept.

Hoi Polloi 2006

An encounter based installation that deflates the notion of celebrity by giving star power to the masses.

Hoi Polloi uses The Red Carpet as your invitation to celebrity. When you walk Hoi Polloi’s red carpet you are greeted by the undulating screams of your fans and the undying devotion of the paparazzi, as they swoon for your attention. Screams of love and hysteria follow your every step. The paparazzi try to get your attention as they to scoop one another in vain attempts to catch a glimpse of your image. Camera flashes blind you as you walk the red carpet. You become the focus of their attention, even for just a moment.

Itch 2001

Itch is an interactive installation. The participants are invited to improvise on record players. The playing/conducting is controlled by a computer that projects colours, When the colour on your record is projected, you can do whatever you like with your record and player.

Itch Record Rubbings 2017

Itch rubbings use records that particpants played and manipulated during the 2016 Toronto Nuit Blanche installation of Itch. The rubbing show how the records have been manipulated by the particpants during thier performance. An interesting artifact from a exhibit of ephemeral sounds.

Come True 2007

Come True was born out of visit to a psychic. The recorded sounds of the visit is incorporated into a garden style Wishing Well. When participants move towards the Wishing Well they hear of my future as the psychic reads the tarot cards drawn. Participants are invited to reach into the wishing well and take one of the fortune cookies inside, allowing them to also see thier future.

Footlights 2008

Footlights, examines the sound of the audience in a performative setting. In this work the sound of the audiences bodily utterances, coughing and throat clearing become the audio focus. Footlights is contained in a old record player. This player with its open lid is enhanced with a LCD screen surrounded by red velvet theatre style curtains. The turntable has a custom cut record, which the participant is invited to play. On the record are the recorded sounds of an audience’s utterances. Footlights, invites the participants to play its record. To do this the spectator is asked to lift the tone arm and pull it to the right where an audible click is heard. This activates both the platter of the record player and video screen mounted in the lid of the same player. The participant then places the needle of the record player on the record and the dancer moves to the sounds of the record Footlights, is rooted again in the use of an old record player. This player with its open lid is enhanced with a LCD screen surrounded by red velvet theatre style curtains. The turntable has a custom cut record, which the participant is invited to play. On the record are the recorded sounds of an audience’s utterances, (coughing and throat clearing). Footlights, invites the participants to play its record. To do this the spectator is asked to lift the tone arm and pull it to the right where an audible click is heard. This activates both the platter of the record player and video screen mounted in the lid of the same player. The participant then places the needle of the record player on the record and the dancer moves to the sounds of the record.

Letter to Home 2008

Letter to Home askes participants to experience technology outsided thier present reality, the typewriter. Rolls of paper are extended from avove the installation as participants are asked to write on the typewriter. The desks and typewriters are painted in matching colours, red, yellow and blue. The colours are used to promote emotions derived through basic colour theory. All the letters/words typed are permanently embeded in the paper rolls unlike todays deletable technology.

Salute 2008

Salute invites participants to share the concert stage with David Bowie. The stage built from a old style stereo record player filled with stage rigging, curtains, concert lights, stacked speakers and two video screen towering above the stage. On one of the screens is David Bowie performing his song Fame on the other screen is the particpant singing along with the lyrics on the Bowie occupied screen. The installation has a microphone, stand and spotlight as invitiation for the partiicpant/performer to share the stage.

March 2008

Split Coffee on My White Shirt 2006

Spilt Coffee on My White Shirt began as a turntabled audio work for "dp003 converse without leaving home" at the Cooper Gallery, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, UK. As a twist of fate a catalogue was created so I was asked to create a visual component. I created a participant built Flipbook.

Aural Manifestations 1992

My first partcipatory sound installation "Aural Manifestations" examine the idea of records as instruments. Each record is placed an an institutional style record player hung on the wall. Each record produces a sound loop when switched on. The participant is asked to use switches to create a improvised composition through controlling the length and order of the sound loops.

Mike Hansen Art 2021