Lecture 3: Stephen Vitielo

The Anderson gallery exhibit of Stephen Vitielo closed with him giving a talk. This was an overview of his previous work related to the piece in the show. It was valuable to hear and see the story behind the work and how he feels about it. He showed photos of the places where the sound recordings are from as well as photos of different installations with these recordings prior to the one in the Anderson. The emphasis was on the switch between a constructed and systematic environment like NYC, where Stephen grew up, and the wilderness of Australia or the Amazon river. He spoke about the indigenous people in the jungle in South America and how they think more in terms of sound than words or images. Their mental reality or sense of place was formed more on the audible experience than visual experience. What would be the differences between a place formed primarily on hearing than seeing? How would people's rationality be different in audible heavy versus image heavy culture? How would people's concepts in general differ? Stephen's work is about taking an imprint of physical space in terms of sound, spaces in which the mind constructs and systems of civilized humans have not been materialized yet. His work is about awareness of senses as he is more aware than average people of sound reality and he knows how to capture the unexpected.