VCU news

By Blake Birdwell

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City recently acquired a kinetic sound installation from internationally acclaimed sound artist Stephen Vitiello, professor of kinetic imaging in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts.

“Frogs in Feedback” will be featured in MoMA’s permanent collection.

“[MoMA is] one of the most important collecting institutions in the world for contemporary art, so of course it's an honor,” Vitiello said. “It's also a personal recognition for the value of work I'm doing.”

The piece, originally from Vitiello’s first New York solo exhibition in 2002, features a microphone suspended from a ceiling-mounted disco-ball motor. The motor slowly spins the mic around a speaker placed on the floor, creating a slowly changing acoustic feedback. An audio processor connected to the mixing board helps give the feedback a kind of ethereal — rather than piercing — quality.

“All of my work involves sound and a lot is site-specific, but the aspect of working with kinetic elements, such as motors, only exists in a few pieces and most of those are from the beginning of my exhibition history,” Vitiello said.

Visually, he says, “Frogs” is a bit of an homage to Steve Reich's composition "Pendulum Music," in which performers swing microphones over speakers, following a score for rhythm and timing. Vitiello’s installation is a singular, self-playing unit.

A collector in England acquired “Frogs” after its initial 2002 exhibition. It sat untouched in a box before being sold at auction in 2013. In September 2014, the piece was installed for exhibition by American Contemporary, a gallery affiliated with Vitiello.

Beyond the obvious honor, Vitiello sees MoMA’s acquisition of his work from a preservation and longevity standpoint.

“The museum now takes on the role of caring for the piece, documenting how it is meant to be presented, how the technology may or may not be updated and the degree to which the artist must be involved to reinstall the work if there is an opportunity to exhibit it in the future,” he said. “And then, the more long-term questions of ‘How can the piece exist beyond my own life span?’”

“Frogs in Feedback” is Vitiello’s third piece acquired by MoMA. Vitiello’s works are also in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Subscribe for free to the weekly VCU News email newsletter at http://newsletter.news.vcu.edu/ and receive a selection of stories, videos, photos, news clips and event listings in your inbox every Thursday. VCU students, faculty and staff automatically receive the newsletter.