Ann Hamilton - Stylus

Ann Hamilton’s Stylus installation at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis was conceived as both sanctuary and laboratory–an attempt to link the building’s interior state of reflection and contemplation to the world outside its opaque walls. Employing such elements as the silence of a waving hand, the vibratory clicking of thousands of Mexican jumping beans and a set of speakers telling stories to the sky, the Stylus project transformed the Pulitzer space into a unique audio and visual environment. Hamilton’s haunted call and response responded directly to the Tadao Ando-designed building, animated by acoustic elements developed in collaboration with composer and sound designer Shahrokh Yadegari. This volume both documents and builds upon the installation with texts by the artist, exhibition curator Matthias Waschek and Steven Henry Madoff, photographs of the exhibition and an image-based inventory of the artist’s materials and process.