Opening reception: Friday, September 9, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. Artist's lecture, beginning at 5:30 p.m.

Song of Transformation includes two sculptural sound installations by composer and artist Joe Diebes. Conceived as companion pieces, Sound Field (2003), and Aviary (2004), speak to a confluence of nature and technology, which the artist views as neither progressive nor pernicious. "I'm imagining a division of reality into the fabricated world in which we live and some kind of natural environment that precedes it," says Diebes.

Sound Field was commissioned by MATA (Music at the Anthology) for its 2003 festival, and Aviary by the College Art Association for the 2004 exhibition Suspension: Sonic Absorption. They are displayed together for the first time at the Bell Gallery.

Each of the installations includes sculptural objects in combination with continually changing audio elements. Visually minimal, Aviary presents seven white birdcages suspended throughout a large white room. Digitally manipulated birdcalls emanate from the empty cages, each cage emitting a separate sound track. The viewer, walking through the gallery, hears different calls, in differing combination. Nature is transported indoors, modified by technology.  

Utilizing a similar set of elements, Sound Field presents a world that is literally and metaphorically darker. In contrast to bird songs, the audio in Sound Field is made up of sine tones and white noise in Morse code. Viewers enter a darkened room in which black silk sunflowers grow from a lawn of black Astroturf. Small beams of light hitting the faces of the sunflowers provide the only illumination, as sine tones and white noise call out from the flowers. Diebes describes the sound as an "aggregate sonic cloud through which something raw and primal has been reconstituted . . ."

Joe Diebes studied literature and philosophy at Yale University, graduating in 1995. His varied musical studies range from classes at the Juilliard School to private sessions with pioneering sound artist and composer La Monte Young. From 1996 to 2003, he was an artist member of, as well as the musical force behind, GAle GAtes et al., an art and performance company based in Brooklyn, NY—described by Peter Marks of the New York Times as "an adventurous troupe with one foot in the world of postmodern art and the other in downtown performance. Diebes's opera installation Strange Birds was performed in the U.S. in 2001 and had its U.K. premiere this year. He is currently working on a new opera, Hypatia, based on a libretto by Mac Wellman, as well as on a sound installation for the 2006 winter Olympics in Torino.