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
Copied 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
Date
2005
Location
Not on view
Copyright
© 2005, Kopystianksy
Credit Line
Gift of an anonymous donor
Mediums
Mediums Description
single-channel video, black and white, silent; 04:33 minutes
Classifications
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.


Watch This!: Revelations in Media Art, 2015

Exhibitions

Media - 2010.5 - SAAM-2010.5_1 - 73850
Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image (1.0)
December 10, 2010–March 2, 2012
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image is a series of rotating exhibitions drawn from SAAM’s permanent collection.