6.5.2025

Time Pieces

Time Pieces is the culmination of a collaboration between artist Gabriel Cohen and composer Ben Babbitt. In 2019, Cohen was commissioned to construct a clock tower for the Dallas based sculpture park Sweet Pass. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the project had to be scuttled. When the exhibition was finally re-scheduled for the Fall of 2021, Cohen needed a way to re-energize the sculpture which had sat in storage at Sweet Pass for nearly two years. In collaboration with Sweet Pass, Cohen was able to commission a musical accompaniment from Babbitt. Together they sketched out the architecture for the work that would become Time Pieces: A twelve note sequence expanded into a twelve hour composition, tracking the movement of time through the development of themes and variations which iterate hourly. Made using only digital synthesis, Babbitt’s twelve pieces wind their way through lightly beating sine wave choirs, physically modeled pulses stacking and phasing, and occasional gusts of grainy white noise tearing through the flickering resonance. Time slips and stretches, the hourly chimes like buoys in an otherwise formless expanse.

When the work was originally presented the audio composition played on loop for four months, transmitted over FM frequency to a speaker housed in the pendulum bob of the clock tower.

For this presentation, Cohen's sculpture has been expanded with additional sound systems, which are synchronized via FM transmission. At sunset, Babbit will premiere a new musical composition. As an accompaniment for his original 2021 piece, Babbitt has developed a choral work to be performed by twelve singers whose voices will harmonize with and expand upon a section of the original sound installation.

The evening also marks the release of a limited edition 12-CD box set, containing a newly reworked version of Ben Babbitt's 2021 musical composition and original artwork by Gabriel Cohen. The 12 CD set has been produced in an edition of 10 and will be available for $60. We encourage you to experience the musical work together throughout the evening, and on your own as a shuffling deck of interchangeable sound worlds.

Ben Babbitt is a composer and producer based in Los Angeles whose work spans live performance, studio albums, DJ mixes, film and video game music, and collaborations with other artists including Eartheater, Martine Syms, Zia Anger, Bapari, Colin Self, and new music ensemble Wild Up. In 2024 he began performing and releasing music under the moniker Enhancement and together with writer Steph Kretowicz makes up the band Ultra Instinct. His work as both a solo artist and collaborator has been presented at the V&A Museum, London; the Art Institute of Chicago; SCI-ARC, Los Angeles; Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts; MOMA, NYC; 3HD Festival, Berlin; and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

Gabriel Cohen is an artist based in Los Angeles, CA. The core of Cohen's artistic practice is the speculative completion of the projects of artists associated with Acephale in the 1930's and artists working within the parameters of minimalism in the 1960's (and his perception of their mutual interest in the reunification of a fractured world). Cohen's conceives of his work as being expressly political, addressing the queer subject within western history, the contemplation of death - and in particular its association with queer life -, and the existence of the self within the collective.

Performance

Thursday, June 5, 2025
7–10 PM

NOON Projects
951 Chung King Road, Los Angeles