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memory untitled


memory untitled

Dean Linguey
memory untitled

listening and forgetting

Memory is mapped and mechanised in a feedback system and re-presented as an immersive speaker-forest. Layers of contemplation and interaction dissect, unfolding another version of the real. Dean Linguey

Dean Linguey’s recent work at Seventh Gallery sounds and looks so good that I wish I’d made it myself. The front room of the gallery contains "the speaker forest." A group of speaker drivers, attached to aluminum strips running in gentle curves from floor to ceiling, produces a feedback drone. Out back in the rear gallery, a rectangular frame suspends two large steel plates, which in turn hold guitar strings in tension. Suspended under the strings is a guitar pickup. Give it a tap and it swings back and forth, causing the distant drone of sound from the front room to pulsate—the two rooms are connected, one feeding the other. This is a deconstructed guitar, and up front is a deconstructed amp. But exploring rock iconography isn’t the point here.

Memory is an oblique title, at odds with the sound of the work. Ooccasionally it flies off into a feedback squeal, but the sound field in the front room, during my visit, is static. The piece has a living quality about it—humming with sonic life. But it’s a drone life—with existence but without temporality and thus, without memory. Memory is a central characteristic of human consciousness, and we provide it in this work. In sound installation, a tension exists between the stasis of objects and the temporality of sound. Linguey has stated that tension clearly, but the experience feels relaxed, as the sound hangs in time and space. Perhaps there’s a metaphor: the machine that hums along mindlessly; the life that hums along without memory.

Bruce Mowson
Bruce Mowson is a sound and video artist undertaking a PhD in Fine Art at RMIT.


Dean Linguey

Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, May 22-June 2

Memory Untitled is an installation which includes an interactive instrument born out of personal research into the operation of memory. Memory, in my findings, emerges into the now, inspired by a current stimulus, and affects the unfolding present which in turn affects the intricacies of the memory. And so on.

Gallery Two houses the “live” instrument: two pieces of resonating stainless steel suspended within a metal rectangular box (taking over about half of this space), joined by active guitar strings. An electric guitar pickup floats beneath the strings and is connected to an amplifier. The amplifier feeds two transducers attached to the metal. The machine continuously plays through its own feedback system. Fluctuations in air pressure (visitors to the gallery etc) shift the relationship of the feedback system resulting in a new relationship of resonating sounds.

This resonating metal is miked up and the signal is sent to Gallery One where a set of 8 speaker-cones, suspended between floor and ceiling, receives various positions of the recorded signal and re-presents the machine and the environment in which it exists.
Dean Linguey

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Dean Linguey graduated from RMIT Fine Art (Sculpture/Sound) in 2006. After beginning his degree in Media Arts (Sound) he gradually moved into the Sculpture Section where he began to combine his interests and experiences in sound with a spatial practice. His installations incorporated a sound element with a focus on the relationships between objects and sound, and spaces and sound at the fore of his practice. Linguey makes sound pieces for dance, film and performance. In 2007 he exhibited in Blindside Exhibition Space's Debut03; at Ryllega Gallery, Hanoi, as part of an Asialink initiative; and performed at Liquid Architecture in Melbourne. He is currently enrolled in Fine Art Honours (Sculpture, 2007) at RMIT.