Guy Goldstein -

Bells & Whistles

During my stay in New York I have been collecting, arranging and cataloguing printed publication, which spread free around the city streets and the subway. (e.g. restaurant menus, health leaflets, political flyers, fashion catalogs, among others). I have a special interest on written materials that have been edited or designed as lists. In my personal day-to-day life, I am obsessed about making lists; redoing them over and over again, scattering them all over my workspace.
As I often do in most of my works, I usually accumulate materials, “pile” them as multilayered forms, “digest” them and finally install them.

In this project, after collecting those lists and written materials, I re-type them in the computer. Afterwards, the computer records itself reading them out loud. The computer voice is edited, creating a multilayered sound piece.
When presented at any given space, the perception of the audience is put to test and stimulated by these surrounding sounds. They can be distorted and stretched, thus becoming completely abstract at a given time, or be clear and informative at another. The sound speakers are scattered on the floor around the space, and newly printed lists, generated by the computer, are randomly displayed on top of them. These lists have been distorted as an attempt to correct the computer’s wrong digital diction by inserting punctuation marks or other typographic elements or attributes. The friction produced by the contact of the paper with the sound waves emanating from the speakers will inevitably produce rustling effects. The outcome will provide the viewer a physical notion and experience that reflects my own perception and experience of this city’s overwhelming amount of information (sounds, topics, commercial opportunities, possible choices, social, geopolitical and ethnic multilayered

Working in tandem, I chose to install a series of graphite drawings that feature sonic elements and urban constructions that co-exist and collide, thus providing the viewer with a similar sense of fast paced living. I see that as another step towards the transformation from object to writing to imaging to sound. In Hebrew, my mother tongue, the words “list”, drawing, impression and writing come from the same root.
Drawing is a process made of adding and accumulating layers of graphite and images. Some of them are abstract while others are realistically drawn objects. Due to their display on the walls, they alternate movement and pause moments, in a rhythmic mantra or waves of obscure and clear images and ideas. They will allow the viewer to experience the same feelings the sound piece and the city itself do.

Guy Goldstein
New York, May 2012