What turns language into meaning? Do lyrical forms of articulation, meter, and symmetry expand language’s primary function to transmit information through a system of senders and receivers comprised of a circumscribed set of symbols? Do they move phonetics, syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics, beyond understood forms of knowledge production to reveal hidden truths?

Sound is produced when something vibrates. Those vibrations travel through the air, water, and ground carrying meaning with them--soundwaves with mapped areas of high and low pressure called compressions and rarefactions, respectively. When two identical waveforms are added together, peak meets peak, and trough meets trough, doubling the amplitude; constructive interference. If two opposite waveforms are added, peak cancels trough, diminishing the waveform and leaving silence; destructive interference--hidden meaning.

Alongside work by Thalia Rodgers and video by Ameen Wahba, Trope Honor, curated by Ameen Wahba, pairs spoken word recordings by Amanda Huckins, Zedeka Poindexter, Paul Hanson Clark, and Devel Crisp with ambient and percussive recordings by Nick Holden, Phillip Kolbo, Colin Duckworth, and Graham Patrick Ulicny. Each pairing constitutes a new collaborative work that disrupts our understanding of how meaning is transmitted through the sound of language, shifting emphasis away from what we hear to how we hear it. Rooted in chance and hinged on the interdependencies created by combining disparate waveforms, these new works complicate impulses to construct traditional narratives based on lyrical content by asking listeners to sink into the troughs rather than scale the peaks.

Free and open to the public. This exhibition is presented with the support of the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.

Exhibition Dates: September 13 - October 18, 2019
Opening Reception: September 13, 2019; 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Regular Gallery Hours: Thursday - Friday, 12:00 - 5:00 PM