Manipulated cellphone audio recordings from global social protests are transformed into a large-scale sonic installation by award-­winning composer Angie Mullins in a group exhibition that opens on Wednesday July 4 at 18h00 at the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios. ‘Mass Effect’ is a collaborative artwork by Mullins and visual artist Nathan Jansen van Vuuren that references mob mentality and mass hysteria. The Johannesburg? based artists share a fascination for the way in which human behaviour responds to exceptional social stimuli. The cellphone recordings sample protests in countries including South Africa, the UK, Canada and the North African region during the Arab Spring.

This work forms part of an interdisciplinary exhibition ‘Sounding Out’, which broadly concerns the intersection of contemporary music and visual art. Professor Achille Mbembe of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) will officially open the exhibition.

Other artworks include a sound installation by artist and musician João Orecchia of small objects transformed by technology to tell “quiet stories” of piano pieces by musician Jill Richards. A silent video of two hands in gold gloves performing a single clap on repeat, shot at 5000 frames a second, by artist Josh Ginsburg resonates with a violin sculpture by artist Lynette Bester rendered supposedly mute by a 10-­pound hammer. Yet ‘Medusa’ has apparently acquired a new voice: it is reassembled with horsehair and speaks eloquently of both violence and fragility. Brendon Bussy, meanwhile, literally alters the way we hear with ‘Ear Shells’ that in a more playful vein offer visitors to ‘Sounding Out’ the opportunity to re?engage with listening. And ‘Pose and Repose’, a collaborative performance piece by Josh Ginsburg and Jared Ginsburg, will take place in the gallery space during the second week of the exhibition run.

Composer?librettist Neo Muyanga, meanwhile, offers animated digital sketches with music and lithographs created in preparation for his new operetta ‘The Flower of Shembe’, a mythical tale about fate and destiny. His entire operetta comes up to Johannesburg for two nights to coincide with ‘Sounding Out’.

The exhibition also extends beyond the gallery walls through a radio art project where artists are invited to treat airtime as gallery space. This collaboration with Invisible Cities Pirate Radio (ICR) includes Bussy and Orecchia, Malose Malahlela, Jane Rademeyer, James Sey and James Webb. ICR will for the duration of the exhibition take up residence at the Bag Factory and broadcast the sound art in-between scheduled shows.

Exhibition run: Opens July 4; Closes July 18
Gallery hours: 09h30-16h30