A cacophony of sounds, made by a combination of found objects and vintage instruments, reanimated a former convent in Greenpoint this Saturday. Roughly 40 artists spent ten days adorning four floors of the forlorn space with sound and multimedia installations, for “Sequence of Waves,” a one-day exhibition sponsored by the collective Rabid Hands, which — despite the nunnery setting — was far more like a psychedelic carnival than anything you’ve seen in The Sound of Music. “It felt like nobody had ever been in the whole building,” said Tim Laursen, a Greenpoint resident. “Now, there’s this youthful energy carrying all of these old materials around.” Crammed into individual rooms along long corridors and narrow staircases, the artworks focused on sound. Some redirected noises to different parts of the building. One filtered every sound from every room onto a cassette tape. The gong and drum reverberations from Taylor Kuffner’s Gamelatron (named after a “gamelan”, an Indonesian instrument) permeated the entire building. Artist Ben Wolf’s towering sculpture of wooden arches and metal pipes even incorporated a live marching band. At one point, during an absurdist monologue in one corner of the convent, someone from the crowd shouted: “I can’t hear you!” The performer responded, “It doesn’t matter!” Check out our photos from the opening event.
