About
Angels Gate Cultural Center is located on Tongva land atop a rugged bluff overlooking the Port of Los Angeles, Catalina Island, and the Pacific Ocean. During the 1940s the hilltop site was part of the Fort MacArthur military base. It is now a thriving sanctuary for the arts.
The artists of soundpedro activate, in surprising ways, this unique site--both indoors and out. Unlike music, sound art is the aural equivalent of cinema, painting, theater, sculpture, and literature. “Sound art” as a term has been variously dated to 1974, 1979, and 1982. Since then, artists have taken the genre in a variety of directions. Reframing the act of listening, works and performances explore the progression of sound from hearing to experience.
soundpedro, like all FLOOD-produced presentations, is an experimental, experiential event, approached as a creative lab for both artists and visitor-participants.
Our 2019 event added greater conceptual breadth to soundpedro by moving beyond sound to “ear orientation.” Earmaginations presented silent videos that explored and synthesized ideas and images responding to aurality.
soundpedro is a combination of research and serendipity, grit and polish, education and disruption.
In 2013, 100 years after the release of Luigi Russolo’s Futurist manifesto “The Art of Noises,” the Long Beach-based art collective, FLOOD, presented its last SoundWalk. Just as Russolo’s seminal declaration strove to open new ways of perceiving, FLOOD pursued similar aspirations through SoundWalk, which created a platform to raise awareness of and appreciation for sound art. The event grew to include a mix of local, national and international artists, and the community experienced inspiring aesthetic sensibilities and approaches.
After ten years of producing SoundWalk, FLOOD believed it was time for a change. Deciding to expand beyond the aural towards more synaesthetic modes of presentation and perception, FLOOD produced PUMP, a multi-sensory event in October of 2017, which offered opportunities for cognitive boundaries to dissolve and senses to converge.
Following the final SoundWalk, however, sound artists and art professionals perceived a vacuum. They had lost a high-profile event that introduced mainstream communities to sound art, a form often relegated to the margins. In response, Amy Eriksen, Executive Director of Angels Gate Cultural Center, approached FLOOD with the proposition of starting soundpedro. Angels Gate is fertile ground for this endeavor as studio program artists and musicians have long experimented in the area of sound. In 1998, Angels Gate studio artist Cindy Bernard organized angels gate dusk which combined experimental improvisation with visual art installations and led to the founding of the Society for the Activation of Social Space through Art and Sound (SASSAS) in Los Angeles.
Photos: background: Dr. Nicholle Andrews "Ear Cleaning" | top: Tom Pine | middle: Henry Krusoe | bottom: Tim Feeney