**Leonard Francis Coogan**

The following is an interview with Stephen Vitiello, sound artist and Chair of Kinetic Imaging at VCUarts.
He made his breakthrough as a sound artist with the residency he did
[recording sounds of and from the 91st floor of the World Trade Center in 1999](https://whitney.org/collection/works/15832).
I don't know Stephen personally, but he'll be one of my professors when I start
the Kinetic Imaging program at VCU.

---
**Leonard Francis Coogan**

First off, what is sound art?


**Stephen Vitello**

It's funny, I laugh nervously because I don't have a perfect answer. Many years
ago I came up with a response, and so many people jumped on it being wrong. At
that time I associated sound art too closely with installation, but it can be
radio, it can be stereo, it can be any number of things. I tend to think of it
is starting conceptually somewhere in between visual art and music. Often
presented in art spaces -- but almost anything I say can be argued.

**Leonard Francis Coogan**

Do we need the term "sound art"?


**Stephen Vitello**

It's so tricky because it's mostly academics who want definitions... and
funders. Anytime you get into labels like "minimalism", most of the major
minimalists hate that term. I can't say I love the label, but I don't hate it.
It's helped me get opportunities and gallery shows and commissions and
collaborations, so I don't know of a better term.

I see whatever sound art is, has roots in many places: experimental music,
conceptual art, visual art. There's many ways to look at it. And different
people come to it from different places. Some from literature, some from poetry,
some from architecture. Where


**Leonard Francis Coogan**

How'd you get into sound art?


**Stephen Vitello**

There was a time I knew chords and I wrote songs, choruses, in 5/4 time that
jumped to 5/8. I've lost all of that. It doesn't mean I've lost everything, it
just means I've shifted what my skillset is.

I played in bands for a long time. And I'd try to play like punk rock guitar or
post-punk. It wasn't until I heard Fred Frith's guitar solos and his use of
motors and vibrators and putting little clips on the string and bowing that I
realized, "oh, there is another way."

I discovered a 60 minute CD-R by John Hudak, who made these long quiet pieces.
He made a piece called "Pond" using hydrophones. I just loved the sound of it,
but also this really long piece that you live with.

I reached out to him because I was living in NYC and he lived in Brooklyn not far
away. He invited me over and shared all sorts of things including software and
I think he loaned me some contact mics.


One of the most important people in my career is Bob Bielecki, who's a sound
engineer, who was a person when I was in the WTC when I was trying to figure out
contact mics on the window helped me get the contact mics working. I guess I
tell this story a lot, but when I said, "I wish I could make sound like the
color of this beautiful sunset, he pulled out a pocket full of photocells, and
said "light has a frequency. If you can find a way to translate them, maybe I
can find something to wire up for you." And he carved out the inside of an XLR
tubing, replaced it with a photocell and wired it, built a little circuit for
me. That opened up so many mental pathways.

He came up one night with a telescope and we pointed the photocell into the
telescope across the river to New Jersey and it picked up the sound of the light
of a police car going by. It ended up making one of my most well-known and
most-matured CDs even though it was done so early called "Bright and Dusty
Things." I think all of my soundmaking started with photocell recordings.


**Leonard Francis Coogan**

What type of work is interesting for you?


**Stephen Vitello**

I like site-specific work. If somebody gives me a whitebox gallery, I often
don't have much inspiration. I like when I'm given a space that has some kind of
sonic resonance, but also maybe cultural resonance. Where I can walk in and feel
something right away, but then there's room to research and learn.

Because people are so culturally conditioned to look at visuals and how dominant
-- but I want to make work in which sound is dominant. Once I get into a space
and figure out "what does this speak to me?" but also "if there could be
anything visual." If the place has got some kind of strong visual itself, how do
I shape the experience so that at least some viewers will understand its first
and foremost a soundspace. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is to turn the
lights off -- but that seems very... not the right balance. But sometimes I've
worked with a lighting designer. I've worked with an architect. Often I do work
that's multichannel. Start to figure out where to place speakers, where to place
the viewer... "is there really a sweet spot?" "Is there another kind of surround
space that's more open-ended that people can move around?", that's probably
preferable, because it's not telling you, "this is what you have to do." And in
the same way, I try to make work that I have an idea of how I do a thing, but I
don't want to say, "you have to get this point, otherwise you're not getting
it." And so, a lot of what happens is that in someplace I have an experience and
I want to translate what that experience did to me into a work of art into a
space and give people the chance to have an experience. But again, they can't
have _my_ experience. If I was in the Brazillian Amazon, there was something so
specific to be there. I can only bring apart of an interesting shadow to that
introspace in France I've been lucky enough to present at. I do consider visuals
because I'm often presenting in visual spaces, but I try to do it very subtlely.

My first kinda breakthrough show was in a really big group show at PS1 called
Greater NY. Most people were in crowded spaces, I had a room to myself. I was
disappointed that there were only 3 or 5 people in my room -- and then I
realized I was lucky because those 3-5 people were staying for a long time which
meant that they were getting something very different than if they were just
quickly observing and moving on.


**Leonard Francis Coogan**

When you read literature, do you focus on sound?


**Stephen Vitello**

I do, yeah, for sure. And certainly certain writers. I've reread Virginia
Woolfe's "Waves" so many times because I love her references to sound. There's
others like Murakami where I like the way he slips with reality. Maybe I'm
not thinking about it in that moment, but then when I start working on a new
sound piece and it starts with birds and they go through some kind of
manipulation into some kind of processed realm, I realize that something from
the literature I like has influenced that. My favorite mystery writer is
James Lee Burke. He writes these really rich landscape-based mysteries in
Louisiana. I know that's influenced my connection to field recordings and a kind
of haunted South that I don't even feel in VA as much as I fantasize about.


**Leonard Francis Coogan**

Thank you for the interview.


_[Music: [Afterglow (Or Abendrot) by Stephen Vitiello](https://championversion.bandcamp.com/album/afterglow-or-abendrot)_]

[Stephen's website](https://www.stephenvitiello.com)