The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is pleased to present Transonic Homes, the second edition of Aldrich Box in 2023, created by musician, composer, and artist Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache). 

Laura Ortman: Transonic Homes is now available to be borrowed by the public, free of charge, through March 3, 2024. Reservations can be made at thealdrich.org or in-person at the Museum’s Front Desk. 

Transonic Homes consists of a selection of three violins from Ortman’s personal collection transformed into vessels.

Titled Violin: ‘Eugene,’ Violin ‘Lark,’ and Violin ‘Karl,’ each bisected violin contains a unique book of Ortman’s improvisational performances translated into scores by Alex Waterman. As Ortman explains: “Violin ‘Eugene’ contains ‘Because Once You Enter My House It Becomes Our House’ – my first live performance after COVID-19 at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York City in 2020. Violin ‘Lark’ contains ‘TRANSONIC US  (SUBWAYS)’ – a recording of me playing at Ende Tymes 13 Festival of Noise and Sonic Liberation in Brooklyn in 2022. Violin ‘Karl’ contains ‘Someday We’ll Be Together’ – from my second solo album of the same name about the eventual meeting of hearts.” The books have been personalized with notes and drawings by the artist. Ortman invites audiences to read, touch, and play her scores.

The Aldrich Box is a yearlong traveling exhibition series unbound to a physical space, inaugurated in 2021 during the pandemic. This year’s edition of Aldrich Box focuses on performance – underscoring the cooperative and interdisciplinary aspects of making art. The three participating artists work at the intersection of dance, music, and the visual arts and will each stage a live performance at the Museum and contribute work to their own Aldrich Box. In conjunction with Transonic Homes, Ortman performed at the Museum on Saturday, September 23, 2023.  Information and images from the performance can be viewed here. 

Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) was born in 1973 and lives and works in New York. She creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin. She often sings through a megaphone and is a producer of capacious field recordings. Ortman has performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Guggenheim Museum, New York, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, the 59th Venice Biennale, New Museum, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, Toronto Biennial, and Centre Pompidou, Paris, among many others.