Unless you regularly haunt downtown Portland on First Thursdays, it can be a little difficult to experience the sound art that the Variform gallery presents. The space is only open for small windows of time. This seems a wise practice to preserve the equipment that plays a role in the installations—like the 2017 exhibition in which composer Ben Glas fed three sound waves into the room, changing as listeners moved through the space. Or the recent presentation of Marcus Fischer’s Multiples, which sent the signal from a multi-channel tape loop into an array of speakers containing seed pods from an empress tree. (It was so cool!)
That’s why the Spring Series concert that Variform’s co-curators Patricia and CM Wolf are presenting at Disjecta feels like such a treat. It’s the chance to draw attention to the world of sound art on a grander scale, with room for many more bodies than their humble downtown gallery space can hold.