As the former home of the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2626 Bancroft Way is acoustically exceptional in ways that cannot be measured or reproduced. A Brutalist masterpiece, the building was shuttered on December 21, 2014 and its future is uncertain at this time. With established and brave new techniques, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon and Zackery Belanger collected a representation of its acoustic soul, interpreted here by artists Ingrid Lee, Matt Ingalls, and Maggie Payne. 

At the close of the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's exhibition program in January 2015, Jacqueline Gordon, an artist who works with the physiological and psychophysical effects of sound on the body, and Zackery Belanger, an acoustic designer and researcher, undertook the immense task of taking acoustic measurements of the Ciampi building. They placed a dodecahedron loudspeaker in the center of the atrium that emitted "every possible sound perceptible to the human ear. These tones were recorded by directional microphones, contributing to a data array that made up the “acoustic fingerprint” of the building. However, Belanger emphasizes, "The goal is not to recreate the building — but to show that you can't."  (Please note that this paragraph references information gathered by Sam Lefebvre for his article in the East Bay Express). 

Utilizing this data, Maggi Payne, David Dunn and David Kant, Jon Leidecker and William Winant, and Matt Ingalls created works that they then performed under a dome of 44 speakers at The Lab. Each speaker required specific acousmatic programming; when audience members closed their eyes, an infinitely unfolding sonic geometry surrounded them. 

The Lab is pleased to issue this LP of Gordon and Belanger’s Acoustic Deconstruction, as the inaugural offering of its new press, The Label. Here, musicians Ingrid Lee, Matt Ingalls, and Maggi Payne create works within this imagined version of the Ciampi building, free of its defensive architecture and resonating finally within the listener’s own body.