An Art Show for the Ears

Soundtracks, running through the end of the year at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, is the museum’s first exhibit devoted to sound in modern art. The array of pieces includes whimsical Rube Goldberg contraptions with pinging chimes, a train crossing at a doorway, and mysterious snarls of wire whose magnetic fields can be heard only with special headphones. My personal favorite piece is the one pictured above, in which museum-goers enter a room filled with a blue pool filled with porcelain bowls, floating about and clinking in a pretty pattern of sound. Everyone is still, phones are silenced, and people just listen. Details here.