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Talman is the only artist worldwide
who can make the so-called silence audible. (Benedikt Conin, regarding
an upcoming installation)
Köln Express, July, 2006
An extraordinary sound experience... Talman is the single artist
worldwide who renders sound installations of this type. (Volumina
Ex-Cathedral)
Kölnische Rundschau, October 29, 2004
Cologne Cathedral sings... (Volumina Ex-Cathedral)
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, October 29, 2004
everything is derived from the building's particular acoustics,
everything feels at home. There is a perfect fit. You sit or stand or
walk in an ambience that is alive... although 'Vanishing Point 1.1'
loops back every 20 minutes, you will probably want to stay longer...
The New York Times, September 24, 1999
one can immerse oneself in the pure, spherical, overwhelming resonance
of this sacred building... This fascinating phenomenon is not difficult
to explain acoustically. Jeff Talman's smart, artistic introspections,
however, take it far beyond. Art is manifest as aesthetic-acoustic
energy. And so a wide field is open to association. In the mind's eye,
everything meets that met before as ideas, requests and prayers, in
hope and desires, in despair and complaints, in God-seeking and loss in
all the centuries in this churchroom. (Ascendence Sounding)
Mittelbayerische Zeitung, July 10, 2003; original German text
New York braces for blackouts as the city's premiere
digital art gallery turns on Jeff Talman's 24-channel sound sculpture.
(resonance^3)
WIRED Magazine, October 2002
The idea is to distill the experience of awe, elation, anguish and
gratitude that people draw from religion without the divisiveness it
can also engender. A superb example is Jeff Talman's installation
"Endless Columns" (2005), a series of five overlapping videos that
reduce the structure and ambient sounds of Germany's Cologne Cathedral
to their essence. Enveloped in a hollow echo, the viewer watches rapt
as the columns soar continuously to a vault that is never attained. The
work brings to mind the oft-quoted lines from Robert Browning's "Andrea
del Sarto": "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a
heaven for?"
The Journal News, Peekskill, NY, June 9, 2006: see
review
A powerful and luminous installation (Sonalumina-13)
Berkeley Beacon, September 30, 2004
Talman's works combine technology, time, sound and space in a beautiful
and thought-provoking way. (The Distance of the Discreet Voyeur)
Berkeley Beacon, October 3, 2000
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a poetic and spiritually
resonant tone...
(Sonalumina-13)
Big, Red and Shiney, Issue 12, September 2004
absolutely bewildering and heavenly...
(Radiant Point One)
WIRED Magazine, October 2000
exquisitely muted... luminously still.
(With The Wind)
The New York Times, August 19, 1997
appealing... an intriguing idea...
(The Distance of the Discreet Voyeur)
Boston Phoenix, November 28, 2002
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detail: evening zero-g
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There is an exquisite symbiosis of
sound and light in this installation, and the sound that fills the
space seems to record some cosmic germination and movement from
particle to planet, presenting us with an elemental deep time. The
imperceptible shifts from one color to another create a pulsation that
suggest that the space is breathing or that we are witnessing something
vast and sacred. The square panels present us with an architectural
geometry, and suggest windows into another sphere. Talman effects a
perspectival shift; it's as if we're looking at an amplification of an
invisible phenomenon, Talman has made visible and audible for us
something felt, but not seen. The aluminum panels create a macroscopic
version of what is already there, throwing these elements of the space
into sharp relief. The installation is very much about the space, but
it doesn't hold us there, and we are invited to wander through a larger
resonant landscape creating a dialogic movement between intimate and
vast space. (Sonalumina-13)
Big, Red & Shiney, Jessica Poser, Issue 12,
September 2004
http://www.bigredandshiny.com/
For this show, the most technically sophisticated pieces are the best,
but they hide their gee-whiz effects well. The sound artist Jeff Talman
has recorded the reverberation of air through such instruments as a
flute, clarinet and trumpet. He then amplified that sound, playing it
back through the original instruments. The result is an
ominous-sounding performance, enhanced by the eerie absence of players
and Talman's impeccable installation. (The Distance of the Discreet
Voyeur)
Boston Herald, November 24, 2002
In a small, wooded area covered with leaves, where the sun's rays beam
during the day, deep space sounds as if it's crossing through the
forest. That droning, however, is not a recording of ambient sounds
from outside the space shuttle. The sounds are a work of art created by
Jeff Talman at The Fields Sculpture Park in this Columbia County town,
and Talman recorded the sounds of a stream flowing through the woods
and then engineered them as an electric score using the stream's sound
frequencies. "It's very site-specific," said Peter Franck, who curates
the open-air sculpture park with his wife, Kathleen Triem. "It's
brilliant." "Stream Space Lacing," the sound piece, is a subtle
reminder of how art can be encountered without being seen.
Poughkeepsie Journal, September 29, 2005
the show's largest... booming otherworldly tones that rise and fall...
ethereal rushing noises that sound like solar winds scouring the
planet. (Radiant Point One)
The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 17, 2000
Then there are temporary artworks. For
instance,
Jeff Talman created sound installations for Cologne Cathedral's square
in 2004 and more recently in St. James Cathedral in Chicago. Through
July 29, his newest work can be heard in St. Lawrence Church in
Klatovy, the Czech Republic.
Do all these new installations herald a renaissance in religious art?
Whatever the reasons for the trend or its outcome, the churches that
draw on the spiritual inspiration of modern artists are attracting a
new group of people who may never have considered religious spaces as a
wellspring of innovative contemporary art. (Volumina Ex-cathedral, Event Horizons,
Under Sound Under...)
The New York Times, July 15, 2007
A few 'pure' sound pieces are
included, notably one by Jeff Talman
based on ambient noise in the museum lobby...
(Radiant Point One),
The New York Times, December 22, 2000
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