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Kathleen and others, I did see Frequencies, the exhibition of sound art currently on view at the Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt. However, I feel thoroughly unqualified to write a review of it, which is why I am looking forward to this month's discussions. I saw Sonic Boom at the Hayward Gallery here in England two years ago and that exhibition is my only point of reference regarding contemporary sound installations grouped by media rather than by content or theme. Through my travels to media art festivals I have attended many new media music/sound/vj performances, but feel that the time-based element of those experiences means comparison to sound art installations in exhibition spaces is not productive. (Is such a distinction useful to developing aesthetic criteria or not?) My initial thoughts on Frequencies are below, but I'd love to hear more experienced curators/participants speak to their knowledge of sound art in mixed-media shows, perhaps the successful yet ghettoised installation in BitStreams (Whitney, 2001), or the inclusion of sound works (such as Douglas Gordon's) in theme shows, such as Let's Entertain (Walker Art Center, 2000). ---- Regardless of what it sounds like, Frequencies, the exhibition of sound art currently on view at the Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt looks beautiful. The Hayward's clompy architecture aside, the installation design of Frequencies put the similar exhibition seen here in London two years ago - Sonic Boom - to shame. White foam sound insulation squares cover the walls - the names of the artists, titles of the works and short descriptions are engraved into the top two like roman stone carving. In the long thin white cube space each work had its own room off a spacious corridor. In the catalogue the installation designers explain they were working from the idea of stretching a frequency - a sound wave - out in space. it works. only rarely can you hear another piece interfering with the one you are looking at/listening to. the show is airy and brightly lit, it feels at times ethereal. The selection of works vears towards the visceral - very high frequencies, very low deep frequencies (both make you worry you are doing damage to yourself) accompanied in some cases by strobe lights (the amazing and deeply unsettling Nauman-esque narrow corridor by Roy Ikeda) in other cases electricity (Tommi Gronlund and Petteri Nisunen's facing concave mirror installation). All of the pieces are of course, as they struggle to be visual, in some way overarchingly conceptual (case in point Mika Vainio's three out-of-synch clocks on the wall look like a Feliz Gonzales Torres threesome; they are wired with microphones to amplify the sound of the minute hand moving). Some works of note: the three installations outside the museum and the three designed for the museum's particular architecture (a round windowed space and the stairwell you mount to get to the exhibition galleries) are very good (Carsten Nicolai's is recognisable as his work before you even get into it - I love that he is so talented that even his completely minimalist sound pieces have developed into an evolving trademark style). The weakest work in the show in my opinion is Daniel Pflumm's video shown on a monitor embedded in the wall showing advertisements for products with all text, logos and name brands removed soundtracked by unrelenting techno music - next to all the other installations/sculptures, it feels completely out of place and doesn't hold it's own conceptually. One piece, that of Carl Michael von Hausswolff is nicely new-media in that it reinterprets the frequencies from the museum's own electrical systems (presumably the buzz of the lights and the hum of the air circulation unit) amplifies them, puts them through an oscilloscope, and then records the image appearing on the oscilloscope and projects it back in real time onto the gallery wall. I would have liked to have seen/heard more works involving the acoustics of recognisable spaces or of found /collaged sounds (only two pieces were overtly narrative: Knut Asdam's piece consisting of a darkened space defined by blackout curtains, which upon entering you sit on a bench and staring out the window listen to a story told by two different women and Ultra-Red's video diptych of images from the USA-Mexico border visible from both inside and outside the building, while the soundtrack - taken from the Quebec City Summit riots - could only be heard outside). Where were the Christian Marclay's, the Janet Cardiff's? I asked myself. Then I realised that they weren't there because in fact the show was very tightly curated around the theme of the "frequency" and not around the theme of sound art (which is what distinguishes it from Sonic Boom most dramatically). And in that, the show seems to be very successful. -Sarah