© 2022

Volker Goetze - Trumpet and Flugelhorn Performance
Zach Layton - Electronics and Electric Guitar

In a 1999 essay entitled, “Reinventing the Medium,” art historian Rosalind Krauss describes photography in the latter half of the twentieth century as emerging into a “theoretical object”. Given the photograph’s specific nature as an indexical medium, it becomes a theoretical object through which to explore the reinvention of everyday life as a form of myth.

Similarly, through the medium of recorded sound, music was utterly transformed. A recording of live music is an assemblage of indexes, vibrations created in in the air and transformed into the form of a vinyl record, ultimately dematerialized into the form of digital audio. All that is solid melts into air.

Sound artists Zach Layton and Volker Goetze present a composition in conversation with the current exhibition that embraces the status of recorded sound as a theoretical object. Through a combination of live sampling and processing of digital audio, amplified trumpet and electric guitar, an extended territory of theoretical sound objects will resonate alongside the constructed images of 20th century photography.

Zach Layton is a composer, curator, improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and educator based in upstate New York. His work explores vibration, resonance, and sound localization. He has performed at the Guggenheim Museum, PS1, ISSUE Project Room, Roulette, the Kitchen, and many other venues in NYC and around the world. He has received grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and has participated in residencies at Signal Culture, Experimental Television Center and Art OMI. He is assistant professor of music production at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

Artist, composer and trumpeter Volker Goetze contributions to the art world are multifaceted. He recently produced New York City's first Sound Sculpture Walk (Sonic Gates), toured the globe for over 12 years with his transcultural African-Harp and trumpet duo with griot and kora virtuoso Ablaye Cissoko, released multiple jazz albums including large ensembles and orchestral while also creating feature documentaries - uplifting and inspiring communities and fans.