Listening to Donald Judd

Stephen Vitiello is a sound/media artist based in Richmond, Virginia, and this is his seventh full-length release -- his first for Sub Rosa. Vitiello is an established name in electroacoustic sound experimentation, having collaborated with artists, musicians and choreographers including Pauline Oliveros, Tony Oursler, Constance De Jong, Nam June Paik, Eder Santos, Scanner, Andrew Deutsch, Yasunao Tone, Frances-Marie Uitti, Dara Birnbaum and Jem Cohen, etc.

This piece is a work in progress evolving from the numerous recordings Vitiello made of the sculptures of American artist Donald Judd (1928-1994) in Marfa, Texas. Judd challenged the artistic convention of originality by using industrial processes and materials such as steel, concrete and plywood to create large, hollow minimalist sculptures, mostly in the form of boxes, which he arranged in repeated simple geometric forms. High-precision microphones are placed directly on the surface of Judd's "specific objects," which capture a subtle combination of sounds resonating through the artwork, as well as ambient sounds.