Yellow Sound

Igor Kopystiansky, Svetlana Kopystiansky, Yellow Sound, 2005, single-channel video, black and white, silent; 04:33 minutes, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of an anonymous donor, 2009.43, © 2005, Kopystianksy

Artwork Details

Title: Yellow Sound
Artists: Igor Kopystiansky
Svetlana Kopystiansky
Date: 2005
Location: Not on view
Copyright: © 2005, Kopystianksy
Credit Line: Gift of an anonymous donor
Mediums: video
Mediums Description: single-channel video, black and white, silent; 04:33 minutes
Classifications: Media Arts
Object Number: 2009.43
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2009.43

Artwork Description

Svetlana and Igor Kopystiansky titled this work after Wassily Kandinsky’s theater production of the same name, linking it to a larger history of experimental art forms and invoking the significance of musical performance to the visual arts. The running time of four minutes and thirty-three seconds references the radical composition 4’33” (1952), in which the avant-garde composer John Cage approached a piano, lifted the lid, and sat motionless in silence for the full duration, allowing ambient sounds in the performance hall to determine the listening experience. Here, Yellow Sound displays found film of a stylus silently playing a record on a turntable. Its rotation is almost imperceptible. The only instance of change is the intermittent appearance and disappearance of imperfections layered on the surface of the original film. Extending Cage’s provocative suggestion, chance is visually rendered here through light and dust.

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