Tobias Rehberger, 81 Years, 2002
Smart Museum of Art
♪ This is the day
Your life will surely change
This is the day
When things fall into place ♪♪
Hi, I’m Yiran. I’m a DJ, music enthusiast, and UChicago master student.
What you just heard is an excerpt from “This is the Day” by 1980s British pop group The The. The artist Tobias Rehberger stretched this song from four minutes to 24 hours to accompany a single color on the screen. Rehberger stretched the song using granular synthesis, a process where sound recordings are cut into tiny slices called grains. Grains are typically between one and 100 milliseconds in length. Then they are redistributed and reorganized into a long, drawn out tone. Rehberger chose “This is the Day” because it was the soundtrack of his early teenage years. The song ignited his desire to become an artist. However, the song is now presented as a romantic and nostalgic time capsule. As the art historian Ina Blom said, the melodic and harmonic qualities of the song are transformed into an accumulation of inexpressive sonic materials. The sound loses all of his connection to normal attention and becomes pure signals and frequencies.
♪
Tobias Rehberger, <em>81 years</em>, 2002. Installation view,Night Shift, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2002. Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin. Photo: Marc Domage
Tobias Rehberger, 81 years, 2002. Installation view,Night Shift, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2002. Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin. Photo: Marc Domage
Long Image Description
Long descriptions are text versions of the information provided in a detailed or complex image, like the image above.A crisp, rectangular projection of solid color on a large-scale screen illuminates a dark room. The bright lemony-green bathes the room, particularly the reflective floor, in a faint green hue. Four relaxed spectators—all seated, some leaning back on their elbows, some with their legs crossed—sit in front of the rectangular screen. These spectators have no distinguishable features; rather they are silhouetted by the haunting green light. From the camera’s position, the green appears to be significantly larger than the people seated in front of it. With the exception of the projected image and pictured spectators, the room is empty.