Noise

For his first Portland gallery installation, Dan Senn’s multi-dimensional Many Pairs Sounding fills the small rectangular room at Portland Art Center (PAC) with both audience and noise. On a cold Thursday night, a group of about 30 gathered upstairs to enjoy an informative lecture by Senn, who considers himself a viewer of his work.

“I just work with ideas, and when I’m finished I become part of the audience,” he says.

Senn’s self-professed focus is the unification of music and art in his work. In most of his installations, seeing and hearing are both incredibly interesting. The audience can enjoy either the visual or auditory aspects of a work–Senn deliberately creates both on multiple sensory levels.

For Many Pairs, the fluttering of the paper in seemingly random patterns and rates of speed keeps the eye scanning the sculpture to see which piece will vibrate next. Listening to the work with eyes closed is reminiscent of being trapped in a dark room with an apathetic fly.

Raised in Wisconsin, Senn decided early in life to be a band director. Fortunately, his roots are musically gifted and he entered university well on his way to the bandstand. His ceramicist roommate introduced him to the raku style of pottery, and Senn’s life changed course. Fascinated by the unpredictability, instability and low success rate of the process, Senn began to study ceramics, and then art in general.

Now active in both the Northwest and Europe, Senn has traveled and taught throughout the world, creating installations that incorporate natural phenomena such as streams and caves in addition to (more) conventional indoor works.

For “Point Defiance Lyre,” Senn harnessed the small stream to pendulums via a monofilament. The pendulums then struck found-object “drums” at unpredictable intervals to create a tinkling music that harmonized with the running water. Thinking of himself as both composer and artist, Senn related his joy at the fact that 20,000 people saw the installation: “…what an amazing opportunity for a composer!”

It is comforting to experience an artist who does not take himself or his work too seriously. Many titles are quaintly descriptive such as his “Flutter Moths” constructions that generate unpredictable yet rhythmic sounds as a weighted washer circles down a piece of threaded steel. Yet in typical Senn style they are both visually and audibly entertaining. Earlier works such as the “Scrapercussion” series of the 1980s vaguely resemble assemblage sculpture, yet their sound generating purpose would confound any comparison to traditional technique.

For recent inspiration, Senn cited a looming deadline for work entered in a Prague show. The result was “The Odradek Complex,” a witty Nietzsche reference to the indescribable object. An installation of 4 PVC towers, “The Odradek Complex” was the beginning of Many Pairs and did not incorporate either the number of towers or the hay that are present at PAC.

During most of his lecture, Senn chose to focus on technique and means of production. Although he thinks of his work as simple on many levels, his process is actually rather complex. Besides the physical creation of his instruments, Senn also tunes and adjusts to attain just the right tone. For pieces such as Many Pairs, he creates carefully composed soundtracks of both audible and sub-audible tones to fuel the work. At PAC, the soundtrack is a shuffled amalgamation of eight tracks, filled with sounds selected from Senn’s vast digital library. These tones then generate the vibrations which the audience experiences. The resulting “complexity from simple materials,” (some PVC, card stock and a sound system) is the realization of Senn’s vision.

For sound and picture, check out Senn’s website:

http://www.newsense-intermedium.com