Published January 19, 2012 in the Chicago Reader’s “Show us your [____]” section, by Kevin Warwick.

Photo by Andrea Bauer

Polly Ullrich was a new friend and Chicago art critic who died suddenly in a car accident on Wednesday, July 6. Her feature article about sound in art in Chicago, “Making Worlds: Chicago Sound As Sculpture,” in Sculpture Magazine, mentioned important figures and resources in our local community, including my work with Chicago Phonography. With publication of her article, Polly was given support to organize a panel discussion on sound art in Chicago for the annual Art Chicago exposition on Saturday, April 30. She moderated with featured speakers Andrea Polli, Shawn Decker, and Christopher Janney. We enjoyed a nice dinner afterward, and were looking forward to attending the Sound Art Theories Symposium at SAIC, in November. It would have been fun to continue the conversation on sound and its role in the arts. As Duncan McKenzie wrote, “Polly, we miss you already…”

Polly was amazing and her passing is a loss to our art world and local community. She was kind, thoughtful and often set an example that was so blindingly hopeful that it was hard not to follow. I will forever remember her curiosity, interest, enthusiasm, and commitment to fostering a critical community. She will be missed by all of us that knew her and by this community.

Read the rest of Duncan’s post and Polly’s obituary on the Bad At Sports blog: http://badatsports.com/2011/polly-we-miss-you-already/

Here is an Audioboo I recorded at Art Chicago of Polly introducing the panel discussion: http://audioboo.fm/boos/345584-panel-sound-art-in-an-era-of-flow

Saturday, April 30

Sound Structure: Sound and Art in an Era of Flow

4:30-5:30 p.m.

Presented by the International Sculpture Center
Polly Ullrich’s feature article about sound in art in Chicago comes out in the May issue of Sculpture Magazine. Read her full article online with audio and video, “Making Worlds: Chicago Sound As Sculpture.”

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The August 2010 issue of furthernoise.org features four reviews of Mimeomeme’s new releases, including my CD, Rarebit with Steve Barsotti.

Mimeomeme is the Seattle-based label for “…unusual sound art made by an eclectic collective of artists involved with phonography, no- and low-fidelity recordings, raw digital data, plunderphonics, primitive analog synthesis, noise, infrasound, tape cut-ups and other oblique, not-yet-classified sonic epiphenomena.”
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