Hours
Currently Closed
Admission
Members
FREE
Adults
$22
Seniors
$20
Students
$17
Marvin Touré
,
the blood is the water.
View Exhibition
Catalina Schliebener Muñoz
,
Deep, Deep Woods
View Exhibition
Isla Hansen
,
How to Get to Make Believe
View Exhibition
Andrea Peña
,
States of Transmutation
View Exhibition
Asim Waqif
,
Assume the Risk
View Exhibition
Shohei Katayama
,
As Below, So Above
View Exhibition

After School

Teen Summer Workshop Series
Our Mission

The Mattress Factory is an artist-centered museum, international residency program and renowned producer and presenter of installation art. We say “yes” to artists, offering time and space to dream and realize projects in our hometown, Pittsburgh, PA. We invite audiences from around the world and around the corner to step inside, immerse and connect with the artistic process.

Learn More About Us

Victor Grauer

Ocean of Silence

1989

This play is a reflection on the (im)possibility of accepting diversity and the other. The fragmented body of the neoplasm—the fruit of unstable conditions—overcomes barriers, loves and denies itself and others, wanders around, forgetting its profession. It frequently and with pleasure divides, goes through dangerous palpation, questions the possibility of contact with the experience of the other. Poorly brought up but very successful, it invites us to a trans-species transition.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce at elit quis felis ullamcorper vehicula non in est. Maecenas finibus pharetra justo et faucibus. Nulla eu tortor vel ex volutpat efficitur. Vivamus placerat turpis in aliquet venenatis. Quisque ac lacinia mauris. Nam quis lobortis elit. Vestibulum sagittis nisi sit amet euismod hendrerit. Mauris non sodales odio. Donec efficitur molestie quam, sed lobortis massa vestibulum ut.

Nunc at arcu sodales nisi porta euismod non vel neque. Phasellus at lobortis ante, in suscipit justo. Proin non purus vitae nisi molestie consectetur. Vestibulum volutpat lobortis interdum. Vestibulum pretium ligula lorem, egestas ultricies lectus ultricies ac. Curabitur venenatis vulputate dolor.

In a darkened room, high and low pitches vibrate, sometimes shrilly, sometimes imperceptibly, always changing and evolving. Light, emitted from computer monitors placed in the recess above and behind benches, reflects off the black surfaces of walls, floors and ceilings. The artist's computer program generates sound and light in an endless pattern.

Artist Statement

Ocean of Silence is an attempt to invoke something I call 'sympathetic presence' by means of the total control of light and sound ambiance. By sympathetic presence I mean the creation of something not simply registered via some sensory mode, but felt to be directly present to the participant. This primarily spiritual experience should, ideally, lead to a sense of oneness (sympathy) with the 'being' evoked by the work.

Within a completely darkened space, two hidden computers are the source of constantly moving and changing indirect light, casting almost subliminal interweaving shadows on the opposite wall. At times the shadows are visible, at other times only vaguely intuited. At times one has a sense of the enclosing space, at other times it seems to dissolve.

Computer-generated sounds produce a continuously shifting set of overtone relationships, giving the impression of a single very soft tone continuously being transformed. Both visuals and sound follow the same process, based on the independent cycling of individual elements with slightly different periods, something that can be done only with computers.

Exhibition

Factory Installed: October 14 - December 22, 1989
About The Artist

Victor Grauer is a composer, musicologist, filmmaker, media artist, poet, and dramatist. He holds a Masters Degree in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University with additional studies in that field at UCLA, and a Ph.D. in Music Composition from SUNY Buffalo. He was co-creator, with Alan Lomax, of the Cantometric coding system in 1961 and worked on the Cantometrics Project as Research Associate, under Lomax’s supervision, from 1963 through 1966. His creative work has been presented in many venues worldwide, including Lincoln Center (the New York Film Festival), Carnegie Institute (Pittsburgh), The Kitchen (New York), and the Barbicon Center (London). His writings on musicology and the arts have been published in journals such as Ethnomusicology, Semiotica, Art Criticism, Music Theory Online, Other Voices, Millennium Film Journal, The World of Music and Before Farming. In 1998 he received the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's Creative Achievement Award. Grauer has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, the Pittsburgh High School of the Creative and Performing Arts and Chatham College.

More from this Artist

More from this Exhibition

This piece doesn't have a title yet

Toward the Dark

Mixing food with the bed

SUPPORT THE MUSEUM

Give artists the time, space and resources to create remarkable works of art that help us see our world in new ways.

linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram