Bill Jacobson

Photographer and Brown alum Bill Jacobson is best recognized for his ghostly, out of focus images of people. Begun during the height of the AIDS epidemic, the images evoke both loss and the futility of capturing true human likenesses in portraiture and memory.  In recent years, Jacobson has investigated geometry and space —particularly rectangles, which he notes do not exist in nature—in natural and man-made settings.

In Labyrinthitis, Kirkegaard employs otoacoustic emissions (low-level sounds emitted by the cochlea in response to auditory stimulus). Emissions generated by the artist’s ears produce otoacoustic emissions in the ears of the listeners. In this way, Labyrinthitis reframes hearing as an active sense rather than a passive one and positions the ear itself as an instrument.