Taisei Manheim – Looking Outward – 04

The project that I chose was Game of Skill 2.0 by Christine Sun Kim, which was presented at MoMA P.S.1.  Christine has been deaf since birth and through this exhibit she attempts to show her subjective experiences with sound.  Viewers were invited to hold an old fashioned radio with a staff and drag it along a velcro strip hung above their heads. As they walk with the staff being dragged along the strip, a sound is emitted at different levels and speeds depending on the direction and speed that the viewers walk in.  By making the viewer exert a special effort in order to comprehend the sound, Christine shows the labor involved with listening, which is usually a passive activity. Christine has always been fascinated by how people take hearing for granted and through this exhibit affects how people interpret their own hearing of sounds.  I admire how Christine was able to take the parts of sound and hearing that we usually don’t think about such as the act of hearing itself and how sight connects with hearing and made people face these questions that she faces on a daily basis.