Ashtangakasha

Ashtangakasha

Ashtangakasha is an audio installation originally presented at Bill Teeple's Gallery 51 East (a component of the Iowa Contemporary Art institute) in Fairfield, IA, in the summer of 2004. The name "ashtangakasha" is a synthetic compound from the Sanskrt words for "eight" and "space" — hence, "eightfold space." (The final "a" is, appropriately, silent.)

There are interesting connections between this non-verbal audio art piece and certain fundamental concepts of Advaita Vedanta. Ashtangakasha comprises 8 speakers (one centered on each wall, and one in each corner), accompanied by a two-foot sphere on a pedestal in the center of the room. The sphere has in turn 8 openings, each containing a small speaker deep inside. (See "Gallery Description," below, for a description of how the 16 speakers are used.)

This installation is a piece of conceptual art, and is specifically not music -- it explores the way we perceive space through hearing, which is what I find most interesting.

Gallery Description

Eight sound environments are presented in random sequence, "beyond" the confining gallery room, with a long silence between them. They are heard through opening and closing doors. As each sound is cut off by a closing door, the listener's attention is thrown back into the silence of the present gallery space. At the center of the gallery space is a "dimensionless point," enlarged to macroscopic scale (a sphere about 24 inches in diameter) for easier viewing. The sphere has eight two-inch openings evenly spaced around it, pointing in the cardinal directions. Each opening in the sphere corresponds to one of the eight sound environments, each of which can be heard faintly inside the sphere (ongoing, uninterrupted by doors). Thus the external worlds are also internal; what is outside is inside. The observer is in the gap; he is the gap; he is the silence.

The speakers are hidden behind tall narrow curtains, and are driven by an automated construction mounted on an adjoining wall in the next room. This mechanism controls the timing and determines which sound environment will be heard from which speaker. (Each sound is assigned to a specific speaker or direction. The eight sound environments comprise ocean surf, forest with birdsong, crowded restaurant, city intersection, strong wind, country road, rain with thunder, and distant freight train.

Click here for more installation photos. Click here for construction photos.