Breaking Free from Fixed Keys, Harmonies, and Time Signatures

Can you hear it?

It is the sound of three modified robotic vacuum cleaners driving around in unpredictable patterns, creating a cacophony of sound. In a studio, one of the international sound artists-in-residence here at Sound Art Lab has built a peculiar installation out of oyster shells, wooden blocks, and debris gathered from the beach. Two robotic arms spin around, using wire mesh to generate strange, uncanny noises.

Pola Trabinska comes from Warsaw, Poland. When she arrived three months earlier, her first thought was that it felt strange for Struer to be known as the City of Sound. Compared to her hometown, the city is completely quiet. But inside the buildings of Sound Art Lab, sound exists in every shape and form. And here, it doesn't just emerge from two speakers, but from four or eight—unless it comes from bizarre, home-built instruments, a doll's head, clay sculptures, music boxes hidden inside books, or, indeed, three robotic vacuum cleaners.

Here, sound is not trapped in what Pola calls a prison of fixed keys, harmonies, and time signatures. Sound art challenges our hearing and creates narratives that penetrate straight into the nervous system. You can close your eyes, you can choose not to touch, but you cannot shut your ears. The sound is there. And it wants something from us.