Night Sounds is a performance series that parallels the seven part sculpture-in-residence exhibition Night (1947 – 2015). Guests join the performer and program curators for a live performance on the Glass House campus. Night Sounds is guest curated by Jordan Stein.

Night Sounds #2, Friday, featured the performance of Erratics by ARP alongside Tauba Auerbach’s sculpture Gnomon/Wave Fulgurite (2013).

Erratics consists of a suite of compositions written for cello and French horn. Alexis Georgopoulos, the composer and artist who performs as ARP, remarks “When Tauba decided to construct her sculpture from sand, the links between sand and glass became a motif in my piece.” Georgopoulos continues, “At points, the cello and French horn will be recognizable, at others blurred beyond distinction, leaving a glassy finish, the sense of a horizontal pane of sound. Slowing the instruments down renders the instruments transparent and difficult to make out. The source material turns into something else. Through a very simple act, involving time – often a key association with sand, be it the Hour Glass or the crossing of deserts – the sound transforms itself. Whether crossing the Sahara or finding a place to throw one’s towel on the beach, a passage through sand alters one’s orientation to time and the way one views landscape. “

For the Night Sounds #2 performance, three double-sided vinyl acetates, or dubplates, were pressed. The music on these six sides contained specific and sometimes singular elements that make up the composition and were arranged by ARP live on site, using two turntables. The sound recorded on the fragile dubplates degraded, distorted, and dissolved during the performance. This quality was exploited to emphasize ideas of material, relation to time, to sound and to degradation and obfuscation.

Alexis Georgopoulos is a composer and artist based in New York City. As ARP, he makes liminal, minimal music, often with analog synthesizers and, increasingly, with classical stringed instruments. Since 2002, he has performed internationally and has been presented by CHANEL, The Kitchen, PS1, Goethe–Institut, Deitch Projects, Walker Art Center, MoMA, New Museum, White Columns, 303 Gallery, Jacob’s Pillow, SFMoMA, Luggage Store Gallery, Jack Hanley Gallery, New Langton Arts, Yerba Buena Center and Frieze Art Fair. He has released work on labels such as RVNG Intl, Type, Smalltown Supersound, DFA, True Panther Sound, Rong, Eskimo, Lo, Root Strata, Troubleman Unlimited, White Columns & Deitch Projects. He has remixed Lindstrøm, Delorean, Lawrence Wiener and Ned Sublette, Harald Grosskopf and Shocking Pinks and has been remixed by Hot Chip, Studio, Munk, Optimo, Etienne Jaumet and Soft Pink Truth.

Night Sounds #2 was generously funded in part by the Historic Sites Interpretation and Education Fund, administered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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