M. W. Burns

Last updated April 21, 2019

M. W. Burns (born 1958 in Stamford, Connecticut) is an American sound artist. His audio installations explore how sound can transform one's sense of place. Much of his work has focused on public address and the evolving proliferation of spoken message systems where voices are deployed as behavior management devices, operating as a kind of "disembodied sonic superego".^[1] One of his earliest public works took place in 1983 in a Philadelphia park, repeating short phrases over a PA system.^[2]

Stamford is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. According to the 2010 census, the population of the city is 122,643. As of 2017, according to the Census Bureau, the population of Stamford had risen to 131,000, making it the third-largest city in the state and the seventh-largest city in New England. Approximately 30 miles from Manhattan, Stamford is in the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk Metro area which is a part of the Greater New York metropolitan area.

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.

Sound art is an artistic discipline in which sound is utilised as a primary medium. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. Sound art can be considered as being an element of many areas such as acoustics, psychoacoustics, electronics, noise music, audio media, found or environmental sound, soundscapes, explorations of the human body, sculpture, architecture, film or video and other aspects of the current discourse of contemporary art.

More recent projects integrate prerecorded sounds into existing environments to alter the perception of events. Much like the Foley artist, who uses sound effects in film to create a sense of action or environment, Burns' application of sound to space plays with one's sense of presence and reality.

Burns has had solo exhibitions at the TBA Exhibition Space, Chicago; Northern Illinois University Art Museum; Tough, Chicago and the Lab, San Francisco. His sound installations have been included in numerous group exhibitions, including the "2000 Whitney Biennial"^[3] at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; "Sound/Video/Film", the Donald Young Gallery; "Contextual: Art and Text in Chicago", at the Chicago Cultural Center; "Time Arts" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; "The Body" at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago and "Sound Canopy", a public project supported by the Hyde Park Art Center.

Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in Illinois, as well as the third most populous city in the United States. With an estimated population of 2,716,450 (2017), it is the most populous city in the Midwest. Chicago is the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area, often referred to as Chicagoland, and the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the United States. The metropolitan area, at nearly 10 million people, is the third-largest in the United States, and the fourth largest in North America and the third largest metropolitan area in the world by land area.

San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a city in, and the cultural, commercial, and financial center of, Northern California. San Francisco is the 13th-most populous city in the United States, and the fourth-most populous in California, with 883,305 residents as of 2018. It covers an area of about 46.89 square miles (121.4 km²), mostly at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second-most densely populated large US city, and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is also part of the fifth-most populous primary statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area.

The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as the "Whitney", is an art museum in Manhattan. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), a wealthy and prominent American socialite and art patron after whom it is named.

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References

↑ Christoph Cox, description of Posing Phrases in a catalog essay for the "Audible Imagery", exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago.
↑ "Art People: hearing things with M.W. Burns". Chicago Reader. March 13, 1997. Retrieved October 1, 2015.
↑ Anderson, Maxwell Lincoln; Art, Whitney Museum of American (2000). Whitney biennial: 2000 biennial exhibition. Whitney Museum of American Art. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-8109-6829-5 . Retrieved July 4, 2011.

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[1] Christoph Cox, description of Posing Phrases in a catalog essay for the "Audible Imagery", exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago.

[2] "Art People: hearing things with M.W. Burns". Chicago Reader. March 13, 1997. Retrieved October 1, 2015.

[AndersonArt2000-3] Anderson, Maxwell Lincoln; Art, Whitney Museum of American (2000). Whitney biennial: 2000 biennial exhibition. Whitney Museum of American Art. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-8109-6829-5 . Retrieved July 4, 2011.