Between Site-Specific and Sound Installation

In Andrew May’s Unset, an ensemble of wind and string instruments perform with electroacoustic music and ad libitum percussion alongside Donald Judd’s 15 untitled works in concrete, located outdoors on the grounds of the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. The composition unfolds as the sun sets and the audience ambles down a path adjacent to the concrete sculptures, listening to and viewing the musicians stationed at each structure. In Unset, the interactions between performer, listener, music, art, environment, and space are in constant flux, drawing on practices of site-specific pieces and sound installations. During the premiere, audience members treated the composition as an installation and behaved as if they were in a gallery while the performers approached it as a site-specific work responding to its environment.
By means of a visual and spatial analysis of the Chinati grounds and Judd’s works in conjunction with a performance analysis of Unset, this paper explores how May’s genre-bending composition upends the experience of performers and audience members. Because the composition crosses the boundaries of the two genres, the interactions that occur are often unpredictable and defy the standard expectations of a musical performance, creating new and sometimes conflicting relationships between the musicians and listeners involved.