Margaret Noble (artist)

Margaret Noble (born 1972) is an American conceptual artist, sound artist, installation artist, teacher and electronic music composer.

Margaret Noble
Noble in 2012
Born1972 (age 48–49)[1]
Waco, Texas, U.S.
EducationUniversity of California, San Diego (BA)
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA)
MovementSound art
Installation art
Sound sculpture
Websitemargaretnoble.net

Early life and education

The daughter of artist Jill Hosmer,[2] Noble was born in Waco, Texas,[3][4] and grew up in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego,[5] moving there in 1982 at the age of 9.[4] Her youth in City Heights has been described as "dependent on welfare, captivated by hip-hop and dance music, among racially diverse neighbors."[6] She earned a BA in philosophy from the University of California at San Diego in 2002, and an MFA in sound art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007.[7]

Career

As a house music disc jockey, Noble performed at underground clubs internationally[8][9] and in Chicago, Illinois, where she spent five years as a DJ.[10] In 2007, she moved to San Diego to teach media production at High Tech High School in Point Loma while continuing her sound art practice.[4][11]

She collaborated in 2011 with math teacher David Stahnke in the "Illuminated Mathematics" project,[12] winning second place in knowledge building and critical thinking, among twelve educators who represented the U.S. at Microsoft's Global Learning Forum.[13] They went on to win first place in "Knowledge Building and Critical Thinking" category of the Global Forum Educator Awards.[14]

Frakture (2009-10)

Noble's Frakture, a remix of a 1953 vinyl recording of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is an "eight-track audio collage of analog synthesizer, acoustic drums, recordings of healthcare protests, contemporary political propaganda, emergency alarms, the New York Stock Exchange, dice rolling"[15] and other sounds.[16][9] On the recording, Noble reads excerpts from the text of the novel.[17]

Sound art and installations (2012-present)
What Lies Beneath, by Margaret Noble

Noble's installation 44th and Landis opened in 2012 at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. The large-scale multimedia art piece combined Victorian-style paper dolls with 1980s urban influences based on her upbringing in San Diego's City Heights neighborhood, and included a performance by Noble.[5][18] The show's visual centerpiece was a hanging series of 100 paper dolls, along with paper-doll clothing, objects and architecture.[19] In her 2016 interactive piece "What Lies Beneath", she worked in sound sculpture, creating a tall wooden box with instructions next to it to raise the lid, which caused sounds of organ pipes, truck brakes and other dissonance to emit. The person interacting with it controlled the sound with the lid, with a "storm" inside the box.[3]

I Long to Be Free from Longing, by Margaret Noble

Her "Head in the Sand" is a wooden box sitting on four legs with a head-sized hole in the top and instructions to visitors to place their heads in the hole and wait. Inside is a chambered light and sound show with soft pastoral sounds, the hole serving as a sanctuary from the art exhibit itself.[3] "Head in the Sand" was included in her 2016 exhibition Resonating Object, an interactive mixture of sound, sculpture and videos, at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington. The exhibition also included "I Long to Be Free From Longing" and "Material Shrine for the New Class", featuring dangling objects the visitor could squeeze to activate different sounds.[20] Her 2014 interactive sound installation "I Long to Be Free From Longing" won first place in the 23rd annual Juried Exhibition at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in San Diego.[21]

Noble's 2016 sound art installation Time Strata, a public art commission for the Port of San Diego at the Cesar Chavez Park pier, consisted of three sound sculptures made of materials including vintage buoys, hunks of bamboo, bells, stainless steel and harp strings, along with sounds of creatures like snapping shrimp in the water under the pier. Microphones placed around the pier fed the sound into a mixer and then into four digital consoles where participants could sample and alter the sounds.[22]

I Have Arrived, by Margaret Noble

For The Collector, Noble worked with puppeteers Animal Cracker Conspiracy and visual directors Bridget Rountree and Iain Gunn, creating a multi-layered soundscape that used animated video, live video projection and puppetry to tell a story of a debt collector.[23] Righteous Exploits, a 2013 experimental performance created with Justin Hudnall, used a combination of live audio and video multimedia and performance art.[24]

Her 2018 installations of Resonating Objects included "lawn sprinklers sitting on grass-covered pedestals, playing their percussive, shimmering, water-spraying sounds", entitled "I Have Arrived", which explores the use of expendable resources on lawns, or status symbols.[6]

A Shit Pile of Lights and Sounds for Your Pleasure, by Margaret Noble

Two other pieces are "Scaled Discords, 2015", with spinning tops representing "power structures, resource allocation and racial inequality in America", and "A Shit Pile of Lights and Sounds for Your Pleasure" consisting of "mash-up of Lite Brite, a Ouija board, and an early Akai sampler".[6]

Critical reception

Noble's art has been presented on PBS and reviewed favorably in Art Ltd. Magazine, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and San Francisco Weekly.[25] Thomas Larson of the San Diego Reader wrote that "enlarging the sensorium of art with sound begins with disorder," but while visual art may be viewed with "one or one hundred other hushed-up viewers," sound art is more like "a Fourth-of-July picnic, Charles-Ives polyphony, a resolute disequilibrium".[3]

Now Is Not a Good Time, by Margaret Noble

Reviewing her exhibit titled, "Now Is Not A Good Time", Rebecca Romani of The Buzz wrote in 2018 of its "intriguing mix" of sewing and tatting materials and rattlesnake tails powered by tiny batteries. Romani commented, "It's tempting to read a cautionary tale of watching too much Little House On The Prairie and the nostalgia that lead us to these current times."[26]

Reviewer Michael James Rocha said in 2016, "Artist Margaret Noble isn't afraid to push the boundaries of what's art."[20]

Observing Frakture, Jennie Punter of Musicworks wrote of Noble's "underground club DJ’s flair for performance and a conceptual artist's commitment to the rigorous investigation of ideas".[15] Mark Jenkins of The Washington Post wrote, "Her primary goal is audience participation, whether that involves turning a crank or inserting one's head into a box to prompt whooshing sounds. Noble's work completes its circuit when the spectator is, literally or figuratively, inside it."[27]

Of the exhibit 44th and Landis, Angela Carone of Public Radio International commented, "Look close and you'll see the ghosts of Ms. Pac-Man, the labels from Animal Cracker boxes and Laffy Taffy, and, on the seedier side, signage from neighborhood massage parlors. The paper dolls are pint-sized mash-ups of '80s pop culture and Victoriana. They seem to emerge from Noble's childhood dreams as she tried to make sense of both a threatening and exciting environment."[19] Drew Snyder noted, "...there is an excess to the sound collage, a soft but persistent drone of spinning bottles or coins, rolling glass marbles, the eternal creak of a cabinet hinge, the rapt knocking on a door, or the sound of something falling over. These reverberations are strikingly material, a confluence and collision of metal, plastic, wood and glass that mash up and reconfigure what we can imagine as a neighborhood's aural life."[28]

Discography

Albums
  • Frakture (2010, self-released on CD and vinyl)

Compilations
  • "Nufon", from Female Pressure (2008, Austrian DVD release)
  • "Safer is Better", from Musicworks #118 Spring 2014 (2014, CD)[29]

Solo exhibitions

Honors and awards
  • International Government's Grant, 2007[15]
  • Hayward Prize, 2007[29]
  • University of California Alumni "Change the World" Scholarship[7]
  • Microsoft Global Educator Award for Knowledge Building[15]
  • Creative Catalyst Fellowship, 2012[31]
  • First Prize, Musicworks composition contest, for "Safer is Better", 2013[15]
  • First Place, Athenaeum Juried Exhibition, for I Long to Be Free From Longing, 2014[21]

Selected sound art installations
  • Clamor Machine
    by Margaret Noble
  • Home Made Time Machine
    by Margaret Noble
  • Reductionist Records
    by Margaret Noble
  • Scaled Discords
    by Margaret Noble

References
  1. "T.I.N.A. Prize". lisboa.tinaprize.com. 2016. Archived from the original on June 24, 2016. Retrieved October 16, 2018.
  2. Schmidt, Michelle (November 1, 2018). "What sound does art make?". The Lewiston Tribune. Archived from the original on February 16, 2019. Retrieved November 25, 2018.
  3. Larson, Thomas (June 8, 2016). "Noisy Margaret Noble seeks friend not foe". The San Diego Reader. Archived from the original on May 15, 2017. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  4. Chute, James (June 16, 2012). "Artist Margaret Noble knows City Heights". The San Diego Union-Tribune. Archived from the original on October 24, 2016. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  5. Chute, James (March 24, 2012). "Margaret Noble embarks on large-scale work for Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego". The San Diego Union-Tribune. Archived from the original on October 24, 2016. Retrieved October 23, 2016.
  6. Ryce, Walter (November 2, 2018). "An artist explores the world through recycled objects, installation and sound". Monterey County Weekly. Retrieved November 25, 2018.
  7. DeVries, Henry (August 2, 2010). ""Change the World" Scholarship Awarded to Sound Artist". UCSD News Center. Archived from the original on November 2, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2019.
  8. Hattam, Meredith (January 4, 2010). "Sushi's 'Fresh Sound' Music Series Blends Big Brother And A Golden Voice". KPBS. Archived from the original on January 30, 2010. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  9. "She Has 1984 on Vinyl". San Diego Reader. Archived from the original on August 13, 2013. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  10. Chute, James (August 11, 2012). "Creating '44th and Landis' provided Margaret Noble with an art education". The San Diego Union-Tribune. Archived from the original on August 13, 2013. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  11. Honan, Mat (April 19, 2010). "Found: The Future of Children's Books". Wired. 18 (5). Archived from the original on April 21, 2014.
  12. "Students Animating Fractals, Thinking on Pi and mental illness, and Cryptography? And it's math class and art class too!". TeachTec. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  13. "12 educators to represent the U.S. at the Partners in Learning Global Forum". TeachTec. Archived from the original on October 16, 2018. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  14. Bennett, Kelly (November 15, 2011). "Teachers of Math's Creative Side Win Global Prize - Voice of San Diego". Voice of San Diego. Archived from the original on October 16, 2018. Retrieved October 16, 2018.
  15. Punter, Jennie (Spring 2014). "Margaret Noble's Safer Is Better". musicworks. Archived from the original on October 13, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  16. Morlan, Kinsee (November 24, 2010). "Margaret Noble records, listens and revises". San Diego City Beat. Archived from the original on October 15, 2018. Retrieved October 14, 2018.
  17. Tallon, Camille (Summer 2012). "44th & Landis". Manor House Quarterly (4): 45–49.
  18. Stephens, AnnaMaria (July 2012). "The Exhibitionists" (PDF). Riviera Magazine (published July 2, 2012): 78–80. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  19. Carone, Angela (September 10, 2012). "Growing up in City Heights". PRI Arts, Culture & Media. Archived from the original on October 15, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  20. Gilmore, Molly (September 22, 2016). "Visitors, sound part of the art in 'Resonating Objects'". The Olympian. Archived from the original on October 15, 2018. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  21. Chute, James (August 14, 2014). "Noble gets top prize in Athenaeum exhibition". Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  22. Myrland, Susan (September 13, 2016). "Fall arts 2016: Up close with artist Margaret Noble". The San Diego Union-Times. Archived from the original on September 14, 2016. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  23. Janiak, Lily (September 10, 2012). "Occupy Fringe Theatre 2012: The Good, the Bad, and the Glowy". SF Weekly. Archived from the original on October 24, 2016. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  24. Cavanaugh, Maureen; Casares, Carissa (April 11, 2013). "Weekend Preview: Righteous Exploits, Stay Strange and The Big Read". KPBS. Archived from the original on August 17, 2013. Retrieved October 15, 2013.
  25. "Margaret Noble". Peripheral ARTeries Art Review. March 2015. pp. 150–158. Retrieved October 14, 2018 – via issuu.
  26. Romani, Rebecca (June 4, 2018). "THE BUZZ: The Art of the Cut - Vanguard Culture". Vanguard Culture. Archived from the original on October 15, 2018. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  27. Jenkins, Mark (January 26, 2016). "In the galleries: Strangely familiar objects for the eyes and ears". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on January 27, 2017. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  28. Snyder, Drew (January 2013). "San Diego: Margaret Noble: 44th and Landis at Museum of Contemporary Art" (PDF). Art LTD.: 22. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 15, 2018 – via art ltd. archives 2013.
  29. Noble, Margaret (2010). "Safer is Better". www.musicworks.ca. Musicworks 118 CD — Musicworks magazine. Archived from the original on May 18, 2014. Retrieved October 8, 2018.
  30. "Margaret Noble". SOLO Music Gallery. 2018. Archived from the original on September 11, 2016. Retrieved October 15, 2018.
  31. "The San Diego Foundation Showcases Creative Catalyst Grantees". The San Diego Foundation. February 6, 2014. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved May 19, 2019.
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