Christopher Noxon

SONIC BLOOMS began with a question eight months ago from composer (and the maker of this gorg video) - what role does music play in your art?

That got me thinking and feeling about the sounds of being outside, of bees and wind and birds and water, about the human voice and Tropicalia and Brian Eno and Laurie Anderson.

How to translate all that? My literal brain landed on outdoor PA speakers and how their bell shape looks like flowers - what if we could arrange them into a bouquet? The ingenious Chris Hacker helped design and assemble three sizes of PA speakers into five separate distinct clusters using many brackets, bolts, pipes, flangers and wiring. And then I got to painting.

What you don’t get from this video is how Will’s composition bounced between the blooms - ’s voice was a choir dancing among the plants and people and hummingbirds of the garden. It made me cry a lot.

We installed it in a sunny patch behind Chris & Will’s house for the A/V show, a collaboration with 12 Ojai artists working on the interplay of sound and art that took place May 1-3. So sad it was so short but so grateful to and everyone who played along (especially .clay).

(PA speakers are built for boats so will hold up well outside - also they’re Bluetooth-enabled so they can play music off your phone. Four of the blooms are in my show at now - two on revolving turntables and two wired for sound. It has been fun making a playlist of bloom-friendly, PA-speaker music - Billie Holiday, Stereolab and Edith Piaf are winners.

(Also thnx to for the cool drone shot at the end!)