‘The Tuba Thieves’ at SBCC’s Atkinson Gallery

Sound is the main character in one of the most immersive films you’ll experience this fall. Alison O’Daniel’s NO MA T H EMA T I C AL LOGIC, on view at SBCC’s Atkinson Gallery and curated by Gallery Director Sarah Cunningham, beautifully explores the relationship between imagery and sound through sculpture and film.

The heart of the exhibition is O’Daniel’s ongoing feature-length film project, The Tuba Thieves. Begun in 2013, the film was first inspired by a spate of tuba thefts from several high-school marching bands in Los Angeles. Slowly unfolding through chapters of nonlinear narratives, some of which are based on real events while others are fiction, the film is a collaborative amalgam of vignettes that are as striking visually as they are sonically.

In one scene, the artist recreates the premiere of John Cage’s historic 1952 concert 4′33″ in Woodstock, New York, in which Cage sits at a piano, not playing the keys, the sounds of the physical environment becoming the work. In another, a school bus full of teenagers offers a brief chaotic immersion into high-school life — young voices loudly chiming over one another in a psychologically spirited chorus. With a keen textural quality, The Tuba Thieves threads together seemingly disparate narratives to create a deeply sensorial and cinematically alluring experience.