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From the Feb 19 – Feb 25, 2004 issue

Music

Classical, Jazz, & Avant

Turnbull Bay

by Christopher DeLaurenti

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I'm writing this in the middle of experiencing the installation Searching for a Quiet Place: Turnbull Bay, Jesse Paul Miller's tranquil yet unsettling simulacrum of an idyllic bayside view amid a northern Florida nature preserve. Ringed by undulating foliage, birds twitter and alight onto azure water. Distorting this scenic overlook is a tall, opaque panel with a crude silhouette of a human skeleton outlined by a slowly coursing loop of quarter-inch magnetic tape.

Above me, four speakers trickle out sounds of birds, gentle wind, and simmering leaves that mingle with small planes buzzing overhead and growling gas-powered lawn mowers. The opaque panel not only blurs what could have been a restful rustic scene but projects a sickly verdant reflection onto the floor. If you look closely, you can see the magnetic tape languidly ripple between the silhouetted leaves. A reel-to-reel tape deck, embedded in one corner of the diorama, clicks off and the tape loop of crunchy footsteps stops.

Unlike so many installations that thoughtlessly reduce sound to a mumbling accompaniment, this work effectively integrates sound and visuals: It's hard to imagine one without the other. Indeed, the rushing cars outside the gallery drive the installation's point home; sound alone can corrupt what appears to be a pastoral paradise. Yet for me, Searching for a Quiet Place: Turnbull Bay is also a lyrical failure. Despite an infiltrated soundscape and hazy view, I don't want to leave. Turnbull Bay's elegant dystopia is preferable to the gray noisy day outside. CHRISTOPHER DeLAURENTI