The Spring 2017 exhibition in the gallery@calit2, Silent Music by Robin Minard, will open April 6 and run through June 9, 2017. A public reception will follow the talk starting at 6pm. In addition to the artist, the panelists will include former QI Sonic Arts R&D director Peter Otto, UC San Diego professor of psychology Diana Deutsch, and QI composer in residence Katharina Rosenberger, who will moderate the panel discussion following Minard’s artist talk. Silent Music, an installation by Canadian sound artist Robin Minard, is an ongoing work that mixes our perceptions of nature and technology. The work is conceived for installation in quiet public areas or exhibition spaces. The sounds of the installation are designed to color the silence of the existing space. The installation’s several hundred small, piezoelectric loudspeakers (just 5.2 centimeters in diameter) and their attached speaker wires are arranged on the walls of the gallery to form plant-like structures. The work’s relatively quiet sounds are made up of a mixture of natural and synthetic sources. The sounds of the installation may be reminiscent of a light wind blowing through bushes, of water flowing somewhere nearby or of insect-like sounds. Some sounds are static, some move slowly within the installation. Just as the aural experience presents a mixture of synthetic and natural elements, so does the visual. Although the installation is composed only of speakers and speaker wire, these are placed in a manner which suggests life, growth and a movement toward light. The installation inhabits the space in much the same way as would a living organism, evoking an image of flowered vines climbing the walls of the gallery. At the same time, Silent Music projects the observer back and forth between perceptions of the familiar and the unfamiliar—between that which we perceive as being natural and alive, as opposed to technical and artificial. SPEAKER BIO: Robin Minard was born in Montreal in 1953. He studied music composition and electroacoustic music in Canada and Paris. Since the early 1980s his work has focused in the area of electroacoustic composition and sound installation art. From 1992-1996 he was a lecturer on sound installation at the Electronic Studio of the Berlin Technical University. Since 1997 he has been professor for electroacoustic composition and sound design at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar and the Bauhaus University in Weimar, where he is also director of the Studio for Electroacoustic Music Weimar (SEAM). Minard has been artist-in-residence of the DAAD Berlin Artists Program; the Canada Council Studio (Paris); the Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada); Künstlerhof Schreyahn and Schloss Wiepersdorf (Germany); the Institut für Elektronische Musik, Graz (Austria); the Het Apollohuis, Eindhoven (Holland); the Villa Serpentara, Olevano Romano (Italy); the Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh (USA), IRCAM / Centre Pompidou (Paris) and the Ten Drum Artist-in-Residence Project (in both Kaohsiung and Tainan, Taiwan). His works have been presented in festivals, museums and public spaces worldwide. He has published several articles and books on the subject of sound installation. His books “Silent Music — Between Sound Art and Acoustic Design” and “Four Spaces / Four Installations” are published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, Germany. MORE INFORMATION: The Silent Music exhibition runs April 6-June 9, 2017. The gallery@calit2 is open Noon to 5pm, Monday-Friday. ADMISSION IS FREE. RSVP requested to: galleryinfo@calit2.net More info at: http://gallery.calit2.net