Michael Brewster: See Hear Now

Along with artists involved in the Light and Space Movement in California in the 1960’s, Michael Brewster became interested in exploring the boundaries of phenomenological experience as a means of providing the viewer with a cognitive awareness of how the process of our perceptions conditions our imaginations and our understandings of an art work. Using sound to create a perceptual field as opposed to an object also established a kind of secondary, imaginary visual experience as well as the primary aural one. Instead of walking around a sculptural object, the experience of Brewster’s work requires us to move through the sound as a sculptural material, one that allows us to explore it from within. His work establishes a unique dynamic between viewer and artwork. For his project at LACE, Michael Brewster constructed a sound chamber in which he presented five different \”acoustic sculptures\” which last four to six minutes each, operated from a touch screen.