Memory can play as much of a role in experience of a moment as the elements that exist in that moment. An interval can be defined as a ratio between two points, numbers or musical notes. His Clocktower installation, Interval/Habitat, explores how dramatic perceptual events can linger in memory, creating separate mental "spaces between" that affect our interaction with physical space as well as with each other.
The work explores the idea of afterimage as both an aural and visual artifact. Just as an image burned into the retina slowly fades, a sound can also have psychological resonance in its absence. The work pursues an interest in the dynamic produced when sound and light are used as basic architectural materials to define a space.
The piece also experiments with degrees of awareness of the presence of others and tension produced by social uncertainty as well as the idea of the collective being a trigger for a phenomenological experience.
Byron Westbrook is an artist working with the dynamic quality of physical space using multi-channel sound, light, images, and objects. His audio/video performances under the name CORRIDORS (listen HERE) involve the distribution of processed instrumental and environmental recordings through a multi-channel environment. His installation-based work explores unique and participatory listening formats which activate architecture and community.
He has presented work at venues such as Tonic, Roulette, The Stone, Diapason Gallery, LMAK Projects, Abrons Art Center, Issue Project Room, Experimental Intermedia, ExitArt (NYC), ICA London (UK), Les Voûtes (FR), Wien Konzerthaus (Austria), O' (Milano), Cave12 (Geneva), NonEvent (Boston), The LAB (San Francisco), VIVO MediaArtCenter (Vancouver), Sonic Circuits Festival (DC), Institute of Intermedia (CZ). He has shared performance bills with Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Jandek, Oren Ambarchi, Lawrence English, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Alessandro Bosetti, Jon Mueller, Tetuzi Akiyama, among many others.
In 2007, he was the recipient of the Jerome Foundation Emerging Artists Commission through Roulette Intermedium. In 2008 he was an artist in residence at Hotel Pupik at Sclhoss Schrattenberg. In 2010 he was an artist in residence at Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. He has completed MFA studies at Bard College and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Listen to Byron Westbrook discuss the installation with David Weinstein in our audio archive HERE.
Byron Westbrook's Clocktower Gallery project is made possible by a grant from the Jerome Foundation.
