Visionaire No. 53: Sound

If you close your eyes, what sense takes over? Do you consume the world in sound bites? Are you moved by the art of noise? Issue 53 of Visionaire--produced this time around in collaboration with the British car manufacturer, MINI--is dedicated to the theme of Sound. Packaged inside a specially produced domed case, it consists of five 12-inch vinyl records, imprinted with images (picture discs), that together contain more than 100 minutes of sound content--from audio experiments to unreleased songs, samples and spoken word pieces. Also included is a MINI Clubman "Vinyl Killer" record player: a battery-operated toy car, containing speakers and a needle. As the little car moves along a record's groove, it plays each track, acting as a fully portable record player and sound system. Beyond all this, the issue also includes two CDs with all of the sound content gathered digitally, as well as a booklet of credits and instructions. Contributors include: musicians David Byrne, Courtney Love, Michael Stipe, Adam Horowitz (Beastie Boys), Antony & the Johnsons, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran), Karl Bartos (Kraftwerk), Andrew WK, Chan Marshall (Cat Power), Danger Mouse, Malcolm McLaren, Ruyuichi Sakamoto; artists Robert Wilson, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Doug Aitken, Gary Hill, Sylvie Fleury; DJs Miss Kittin, Trevor Jackson, Towa Tei, Michel Gaubert; fashion designers Alexander McQueen, Helmut Lang; bands Littl'Ans, Fischerspooner, Unkle, Animal Collective, SunnO))) and many more.

Doug Aitken (b. 1968) has created a body of work that explores the evolving ways people experience memory and narrative and relate to fast-paced urban environments. During the past decade, the artist has created innovative contemporary video art by fracturing the narrative structures of his films across multi-screen environments. His work has been exhibited in museums around the world, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York (which commissioned a large-scale outdoor video installation--the first of its kind at the venerable institution), and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. In 1999 he was awarded the International Prize at the Venice Biennale, and in 2000 he won the Aldrich Award.

David Byrne was born in Dumbarton, Scotland in 1952 and lives in New York. Although he is known primarily as a member of the New Wave band Talking Heads, he has been exhibiting visual art in galleries and museums around the world since the 1990s. Much of his work is done anonymously and publicly, including a series of street posters in New York and light boxes in Sydney, Australia.

Kim Gordon was born in 1953 in Los Angeles, California. After graduating from the Otis College of Art and Design in L.A. she moved to New York, and worked for several Soho art galleries in the early 1980s. At Jo Bearis request she compiled an exhibition for his new White Columns gallery in 1982. Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler were participants. Dan Graham invited her to join a performance of an all female rock band, which marked the start of her first band, CJM. Together with Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo, and Richard Edson, she formed Sonic Youth in 1981, a band that she has been a member of ever since. Gordon has toured extensively with Sonic Youth, and has performed in major venues and festivals in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. She has directed videos for The Breeders, co-produced Holeis album, Pretty on the Inside, and, in 1994, started the clothing line, X-girl. The artist-musician has lived and worked in New York since 1980.

Christian Marclay was born in 1955 in San Rafael, California and was raised in Geneva, Switzerland, where he studied at the Ecole Superieure d'Art Visuel prior to attending the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston. He has lived in New York since 1980. His work has been shown and performed at museums all over the world, including the Hirshhorn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Saint Louis Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Since 1979 he has, in addition to his visual arts practice, performed and recorded musical pieces by mixing altered records on multiple turntables. As a musician he has collaborated with many other performers including Butch Morris, John Zorn and Sonic Youth.