DIY Art
How to be part of a new crowdsourced work at Dallas Museum of Art
If you've been feeling the itch to create while staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Dallas Museum of Art has an opportunity for you.
The DMA is collaborating with London-based designer Yuri Suzuki to create a new, crowdsourced work of art, and they want you to participate.
An archive of sounds captured around the world during this global pandemic will comprise Sound of the Earth: The Pandemic Chapter, a digital version of Sound of the Earth: Chapter 2, the work that Suzuki created for "speechless: different by design." That major multi-sensory exhibition was co-organized by the DMA and the High Museum of Art and closed early due to COVID-19.
Audiences can submit sounds of their experiences during the pandemic, from cooking dinner at home to the ambulance siren passing by to online connections with loved ones. The sounds will be mapped onto a virtual rendering of the globe based on the location in which they were captured, culminating in a dynamic audio experience of the lives of people around the world.
"In this moment of tremendous change and uncertainty, we wanted to create an open platform for people to express themselves and to capture our shared experience of the fleeting moments around us during this period," says Sarah Schleuning, interim chief curator and The Margot B. Perot Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Design. "Through our collective observations and the simple act of listening, we hope to provide participants with a moment of global shared empathy and a means of connection."
Sound of the Earth: The Pandemic Chapter translates elements of Suzuki's original installation — in which exhibition visitors encountered a range of globally crowdsourced sounds by placing their ear against the surface of a spherical sculpture — into the virtual realm and lends the project new relevance as a living record of our unprecedented historical moment that evolves in real time.
This new work extends the life and vision of "speechless" by "promoting interactivity, fostering empathy, and — in this time of isolation — bridging the distance between us through the medium of sound," says the release.
Ready to make some art? Sound submissions can be uploaded as audio or video files to earthsounds.dma.org. The work will go live on Monday, May 4, at virtual.dma.org.
