A Synthetic Desert

The work titled PSAD Synthetic Desert III (1971) by artist Doug Wheeler is on display at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. During the months of April and May this installation has become a space for the contemplation of silence amid the noisy acoustic environment of New York City. Wheeler radically and thoroughly transformed one of the galleries of the museum, turning it into a semi-anechoic chamber designed to minimize the ambient noise and to generate the sensation of an infinite space. Wheeler's synthetic desert consists of a space intervened with a series of anechoic chambers arranged across the surface of the room; pyramidal objects that block the sound waves of the surroundings and drastically reduce the ambient noise. Lighting also plays an important role here, as it confers the space the illusion of infinity and depth. A platform placed in the middle of the intervention allows the public to access this chamber and experience the silence in the synthetic desert. This installation invites viewers to immerse themselves in a deep state of awareness of the sound environment, experiencing sound as a state and not as the absence of audible sounds, but as the resonant silence that speaks through its presence across the space. Wheeler explains that this piece was inspired by a trip he took to the middle of a dry lakebed in Arizona in the early 1970s. There, he experienced for the first time the enveloping sound of deep silence. As he remembers in an audio, "It was like, I am hearing distance. I am seeing distance." And he adds, "When you are in some place that has immensity... where there is not a single living thing that you can recognize, there is not a green bud anywhere, there is nothing moving on the ground... And there is nothing in the sky... you become conscious of yourself, it changes your perspective of how we fit in to the mix of the whole universe." The installation PSAD Synthetic Desert III will remain on display until August 2 of 2017. More information available at: https://www.guggenheim.org/blogs/checklist/going-beyond-doug-wheeler-discusses-psad-synthetic-desert-iii?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=srgm-facebook Recording: Doug Wheeler Speaks about the Total Experience of PSAD Synthetic Desert III: https://soundcloud.com/guggenheimmuseum/doug-wheeler-speaks-about-the-total-experience-of-psad-synthetic-desert-iii?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=srgm-facebook