Viewers may be familiar with the seminal physics class demonstration in which square steel plates are sprinkled with salt or sand, an electronic musical tone is applied, and through the resultant flexural vibration, a visual representation of the plate's resonant frequency is depicted. These, "Chladni Figures," are named for musician and physicist Ernst Chladni who in 1787, first ran a violin bow across a brass plate lightly covered in sand and pictorially recorded the waveforms that appeared.

These visual representations of sound are the foundation for Shorb's high-gloss perversion of the ephemeral impermanence that defines traditional sandpainting. In an unlikely crossing of sacred geometry and car culture, rather than brushed away and destroyed after the meditative act or scientific experiment, these granular patterns are instead baked into an impenetrable, industrial polymer on aluminum, kaleidoscopically tessellated and contradictorily blasted with both a diabetic shock of candy colored hot-rod surface finish and cold, Detroit acerbity.

With an adoring nod toward science-fair kitsch, Shorb re-creates classic sonic experiments with a modified sub-woofer, tone generation software, and industrial pigments typically used in the automotive industry. As the input amplitude is increased and a harmonic frequency found, the powdered pigment bounces about on the aluminum plates until settling at nodal points (areas of no movement) and moving away from antinodal points (areas of intense vibration) thereby producing intricate patterns of linear motion and cyclonic rotation which are then immobilized into a single, sonorous visualization. When more plates from the same frequency are tiled together, more of the waveform comes into view, reminiscent of Tibetan Buddhist mandalas; a cenophobic adornment seen through a hyper-colored prismatic, low-rider metallic-flaked lens.

Bethany Shorb was born in Boston, MA in 1976. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art and BFA from Boston University. Her photography and product design work have been widely published in the United States and abroad; her visual art and product work have been exhibited throughout the US and included in numerous private and public collections. Her musical alter-ego has performed at many venues and festivals across North America including the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Movement: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival.

A proponent of Detroit's organic re-invention through the hands of makers, tinkerers, and entrepreneurs, Shorb has called Detroit home for fourteen years and is giving greater focus to more community-based projects while still exhibiting internationally. As a founding member of OmniCorpDetroit, Detroit’s first hacker/makerspace, she has exhibited at the inaugural Maker Faire Detroit 2010, '11, and '12 and World Maker Faire New York, receiving seven Editor's Choice Awards. Shorb has served as a curatorial collaborator at Gallery Project, Ann Arbor's leading non-profit venue for challenging contemporary art and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit's "New Wave" Board. Most recently Shorb was a visiting artist in printmaking at Summit Series, has shown at the 2013 Venice Biennale and is looking forward to her residency at the Red Bull House of Art, for their seventh cycle of artists in January 2014.

Devotion Gallery
54 Maujer St
Brooklyn (NY) 11206 United States
Tel. +1 (718) 5761107
phoenix@areyoudevoted.com
www.areyoudevoted.squarespace.com

Opening hours
Saturday from 1pm to 5pm
Sunday from 1pm to 6pm