Outdoor SoundWalk Exhibits Artful Noise
By Steve Irsay / Staff Writer

The East Village Arts District will be a little noisier than usual this Saturday night.

The portion of the district bounded by Broadway, Elm Avenue, Ocean Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue, will host the first ever SoundWalk, a self-guided walking tour of sound art installations.

It is a chance for the district itself, which has several small and improvised exhibit spaces, to be a large gallery without walls for the night, organizers said.

“What we wanted to say was we don’t really need large spaces — although we’d like them — but since we don’t have them, we can’t abandon the idea of an arts district,” said Kamran Assadi, a member of the artist group FLOOD that is producing the event and a co-owner of the downtown restaurant Utopia. “That is how we decided to use the streets and alleys and non-conventional venues to produce quality work.”

The medium of sound art was appealing because it is inexpensive to produce, does not require a set space and lets artists explore high-tech opportunities, Assadi added.

More than 30 artists from Los Angeles and Orange counties will be embedding sound exhibits “in all sorts of nooks and crannies,” said Shelley RuggThorp, a member of FLOOD and a co-director of Koo’s Art Center.

Those spots will be detailed on a map available at Koo’s, said RuggThorp, adding that the SoundWalk event may shed some light on the medium of sound art, which is arguably not as well-known as more traditional art forms like painting.

“It brings all of these people who quietly work on their process together in a large group so the impact of the art form is a little greater,” she said. “And bringing the art to the streets is a great way to introduce people who would not normally see this stuff.”

The exhibits will be diverse, RuggThorp promised, with some artists sampling environmental sounds for an abstract effect while others will use voices to tell a story. There will be some performance art and other exhibits will use natural street sounds, such as a passing car, to trigger something visual.

During the planning process the artists took a tour of the eventual SoundWalk site in an effort to make some installations “site specific,” RuggThorp said. For example, one artist selected a spot near a dumpster for a piece about the plight of American farmers, the idea being that the farmers themselves are being thrown away, she said.

Other locations will include various street corners, the tree in front of Koo’s, a community garden and even a room in a nearby motel.

RuggThorp said the unique installations intermingling with the sounds of the city should make for a very interesting experience.

“Whatever sounds might happen naturally will be fused with the artists’ work you are experiencing,” she said. “It should be very surprising and be a fun adventure for people to go on.”

Downtown Scene
8.2004

Soundwalk 2004 A New Sonic Experience

On August 21st, the Long Beach artist group, FLOOD, will present the first annual SoundWalk event. SoundWalk is a unique event which will feature a series of sound art installations by Southern California sound artists in a variety of indoor and outdoor spaces throughout Downtown Long Beach's East Village Arts District.

Taking place from 6 p.m. - 10 p.m., SoundWalk is a variation on the concept of the usual "ArtWalk" events that happen every 2nd Saturday in the Arts District. In contrast to indoor art installations, which are seen and experienced as separate from people's daily routines, visitors will experience art as sound-installations functioning in concert with the sounds of the city. The experience will keep the ordinary in the extra-ordinary in a newness of experiencing common occurrences. SoundWalk will surprise, puzzle, enchant, excite and delight those who intentionally or unintentionally participate in the event.

"We envision an environmental experience, which alters the participants' perception of their sense of being in a familiar space," said Kamran Assadi, Owner of Utopia Restaurant and Founding Partner of FLOOD. "Habituation blunts our inquisitiveness, our engagement in the visual as well as audible surroundings. Sound installations will not only be an exciting moment of perception, but a way of rethinking our sensory engagement with the spaces in which we function."

SoundWalk is free to the public and is being sponsored by the East Village Association (EVA), the Downtown Long Beach Associates (DLBA), Gallery 33, and 689 Design. A catalog with an accompanying CD-ROM about the artists involved in this project will be available for sale to the public during and after the event. For more detailed information on the event, including maps of the locations of the sound art installations, please visit www.soundwalk.org or call Shea Gauer, Open Bookstore, at 562-499-OPEN. For more information about FLOOD and contributing artists, please contact Kamran Assadi at 562-858-9846.

LA Times Calender
8.19.2004

SoundWalk 2004

Long Beach East Village Arts District

Downtown - Between 1st & 3rd and Long Beach Blvd., Long Beach

The Long Beach artists' group FLOOD involves visitors and surprised passers-by in its first annual SoundWalk 2004, a day of sound works by more than 30 Southern California-based artists. Conceived as a variation on the traditional art walk, SoundWalk utilizes indoor and outdoor spaces throughout the Long Beach East Village Arts District to showcase site-specific sound installations and performances. Attractions include D. Jean Hester's installation at the Inn of Long Beach, a piece by Alan Nakagawa tucked inside a tree and the first art event to be scheduled in the East Village Art Park. More information.

Aug. 21: 6 p.m. - 10 p.m.

Price: Free, visit soundwalk.org for a map of the walk and performance schedules.
Information: 562-499-OPEN

OC Weekly
8.19.2004

Sounds of Silence

Somewhere there’s a place for this

by Chris Ziegler

Options for the future-music set are a little limited now, says Dr. Frauke von der Horst: "Piss poor?" she asks, unsure if OC Weekly can print words like that. "Okay, go with it. But I don’t want to just stop at ‘piss poor.’"

Instead, Frauke and friends in Long Beach art collective FLOOD—probably best known for 2002’s "Reception-Perception-Deception," a pomo send-up of boho gallery fetishization—started the Long Beach SoundWalk, the aural counterpart to the Broadlind neighborhood’s longstanding ArtWalk. This Saturday night, it’ll be speakers and tape spools instead of gesso and canvas, as well as an ambitious event—the transformation of an entire neighborhood’s sonic landscape—that will noisily announce Long Beach’s art scene to the rest of the world. Says participating experimental musician Sumako, "Every arts community wants its signature something."
Open bookstore co-proprietor Shea M. Gauer and Pall Mall-smoking art history professor von der Horst (along with such FLOOD members as Kamran Assadi, Scott Peterson and Shelley RuggThorp) had been involved with few smaller-scale audio installations (anyone remember Gauer and Assadi’s Cartet, parked on the corner of First and Elm and being REAL LOUD?) notched on their megaphones before they dedicated this summer to organizing the SoundWalk as a response to the already-interesting native-neighborhood sounds (somewhere between Ocean Breeze and Traffic Jam, they say), as well as a chance to give a diffuse Southern California experimental-music scene some welcome focus: "There is a need for something new," says Sumako. "And when you talk to people, their first question is: ‘There’s a place for this?’"

"Sound pieces bleed together if they’re put in the same room—they don’t lend themselves to exhibitions," says von der Horst. "They need their own sound space. And, for something of this format, many different locations."

"Like a whole neighborhood," says Gauer.

The specifics of the 30-ish (not counting unscheduled guerrilla installations, if any) pieces scattered through four square blocks are deliberately murky right now, though there was talk of several FM transmitters hiding somewhere, and the California National Bank was progressive enough to lend its already-striking architecture to some sort of sonic sculpture. But the artists involved—from 10-year vets Spastic Colon, performing that night at Koo’s, to KXLU DJs and students from UC Irvine, Cal State Long Beach, Otis and Cal Arts to members of Long Beach band the Grand Elegance—picked out their spots almost two months ago during a group walk through the neighborhood that had artists cocking ears into alleys and tapping tentatively on dumpsters. And von der Horst and Gauer can’t wait to hear it.

"We told them to look everywhere, down every alley and every street—that anything is possible," says Gauer.

"But now it’s like the time before Christmas, when you see the packages but you don’t know what’s in them yet," says von der Horst. "We’re bringing surprise to the environment."

Soundwalk 2004 between Broadway and Ocean and Elm and Atlantic in the East Village Arts District, Long Beach; www.soundwalk.org. Sat., 6-10 p.m. Maps available at Koo’s, 530 E. Broadway, or Open Bookstore, 144 Linden, on the night of the event. Reception, 5-6 p.m.; Closing performances, 10-11 p.m. At Koo’s. Free.

U-Entertainment
8.19.2004

Check out this sound

Shirle Gottlieb / Correspondent

Thursday, August 19, 2004 - "SoundWalk," a variation on the popular monthly "ArtWalk" in Long Beach's East Village Arts District, will be inaugurated Saturday. In contrast to traditional art exhibits, "SoundWalk" will consist of diverse sound installations at 24 locations throughout the downtown arts area (Broadway to Ocean Boulevard/Elm to Atlantic Boulevard). And it's all free!

Produced by FLOOD to be an innovative, exciting, stimulating encounter, "SoundWalk" was conceived as an annual event that will take place the third Saturday of August. Designed to attract a wide range of participants to the Arts District, it should appeal to local residents, visitors, the creative sector, anyone wishing to experience cutting-edge art — and, of course, the hook is invited guest artists.

Speaking of which, many of Saturday's guest artists are recognized independent performers, professional entertainers, and art or music instructors from colleges across the Southland. Koo's Art Center (at Broadway and Linden) and Open Book Store (between Linden and First Street) are acting as headquarters. "SoundWalk" s" anchor piece will be a new work performed by Young Soon Min, an internationally known artist and professor of art at UC Irvine.