First Floor Cubed was part of the solo exhibition “Rooms” at Oakville Galleries Gairloch Gardens exhibition space, a site-related collection of works. The building’s architecture was the departure point for designing audio playback systems for sound compositions using field recordings made in the building itself. I imagine each room on the first floor as 1/6 its actual size, a scale commonly used for dolls with articulated limbs like G.I. Joe and Barbie. The smaller rooms are reshaped from their original architectural form into cubic shapes. Each cube is placed roughly where the corresponding room would have been on the floor plan. The blinds in this room are mechanized and act as a volume control for the sound. As the blinds go up, the audio in the sound objects turns down. As the blinds go down, the audio goes up. Each time the blinds close, a new sound composition is heard (there are three different pieces made from the same material) for a total of three compositions.
Exhibition History: 2011 Oakville Galleries Gairloch Gardens (Oakville, Canada)
Press: Anderson, Shannon. “Marla Hlady: The Art of Noise.” Canadian Art. Spring: 2013. 92-97.
Supported by the Canada Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council
See also: Basement Bass (Gairloch), Second Floor Window Fill, Third Floor Radiator
