Jace Clayton
born 1975, Framingham, MA
lives in New York City
40 Part Part is a participatory sound installation that transforms familiar audio into a kaleidoscopic and immersive sonic experience. The artwork takes the form of forty speakers arranged in a large circle and pointed inward. The installation is silent until a library visitor connects via Bluetooth or plugs the provided cables into their electronic device. When that happens, Clayton’s system begins playing the visitor’s audio—albeit reorganized by a complex algorithm that shifts, mutates, and spatializes the incoming sounds.
40 Part Part riffs on Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet (2001), which used a forty-speaker setup to play a recording of Thomas Tallis’s 1573 religious composition “Spem in Alium” and is included in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Whereas that installation presents a fixed classical song, Clayton’s work opens up the power of this forty-speaker sound system to amplify the public’s input. In the artist’s words, “It is sound art where I don’t choose any sounds. […] It is silent until the audience makes an active selection.”
Cleveland Public Library
Jace Clayton, 40 Part Part, 2022, Commissioned by FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and the New York Philharmonic.
Jace Clayton, 40 Part Part, 2022. Forty Speakers with custom stands, two benches, plinth, electronics, custom software. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and the New York Philharmonic. © Jace Clayton. Photography by Field Studio.
Jace Clayton, 40 Part Part, 2022. Forty Speakers with custom stands, two benches, plinth, electronics, custom software. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and the New York Philharmonic. © Jace Clayton. Photography by Field Studio.
Jace Clayton, 40 Part Part, 2022. Forty Speakers with custom stands, two benches, plinth, electronics, custom software. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and the New York Philharmonic. © Jace Clayton. Photography by Field Studio.
Jace Clayton, 40 Part Part, 2022. Forty Speakers with custom stands, two benches, plinth, electronics, custom software. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art and the New York Philharmonic. © Jace Clayton. Photography by Field Studio.