Alison O'Daniel's 'Quasi-Closed Captions / Rogue Wave' explores sound as physical abstraction

Alison O'Daniel's group exhibition 'Quasi-Closed Captions / Rogue Wave' presents objects that physically embody sound, inspired by a series of tuba thefts from Southern California high school marching bands. These incidents inform her in-progress feature film, 'The Tuba Thieves', which follows a deaf drummer and a couple amid stolen instruments and alternative communication. The film's score is composed by Ethan Frederick Greene, Christine Sun Kim, and Steven Roden. While the movie is not shown in full, each artwork in the exhibition serves as a tangible manifestation of its soundtrack. Objects include roughly framed plywood pieces suspended with delicate chains, necklace chains hanging in space, and hoops on plinths and walls, acting as portals between senses like tactility, sound, and vision. Concurrently, at la Louver gallery, O'Daniel screens a scene from the film depicting a faceless traveler driving through a storm, with a radio recounting Hurricane Sandy stories and a truck of plants shaking to an unseen force, scored by a deaf composer. The works metaphorically translate sound into texture, movement, and color, challenging sensory divides and emphasizing vibration as music. The review was originally published in October 2013.