Instituto Cervantes has an ongoing installation by four sound artists, Miguel Álvarez-Fernández, Ferrer-Molina, Richard Garet, and María Chávez, through Saturday, April 9th. The exhibit, entitled Sound vs Sense: Intersection, explores the many facets of the relationship between sound and language and engages questions of how we hear/listen and form meaning.

Álvarez-Fernández and Ferrer-Molina were guests at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Composers Forum on March 22, to discuss their work, which inhabits the margins between experimental music and sound art. It explores conceptual art, performance, experimental video and other possibilities for developing our relationship with sound. They engage with these questions of intersections through concert pieces, sound installations, sculptures, curatorial projects and many other manifestations. The artists have given a series of related talks while in town, including a discussion at NYU’s Waverly Labs on Spanish electroacoustic artists and a live performance at Instituto Cervantes of material related to the installation. (Click here to download the pamphlet for the Composers Forum.)

About the artists: Miguel Álvarez-Fernández is a sound artist, musicologist, and theorist. He is a professor of music at European University of Madrid (UEM) and hosts the weekly program dedicated to experimental music Ars Sonora, on Radio Clásica/Radio Nacional de España.  Ferrer-Molina is a Spanish sound artist and musicologist and the author of the upcoming book Heterodoxy of the Guitar: Taxonomy of New Artistic Practices. Richard Garet is a NYC-based sound artist whose work has been featured at MoMA and many international museums. Maria Chávez is a Peruvian sound artist and turntablist. She is currently a research fellow for the Sound Practice Research department at Goldsmith’s University of London and regularly presents workshops in the UK, Spain, the US, and beyond.