One-night sound-art event returns to Belmont Shore for second year

One year ago, the inaugural LBsoundbrowse was an experiment. Could Long Beach’s main shopping and dining drag successfully accommodate the sort of annual sound-art event that previously flourished in Long Beach and now in San Pedro partly because it was staged in arts-dedicated locations? 

For curatorial group FLOOD and hosting organization Belmont Shore Business Association (BSBA), the answer turned out to be yes — despite heavy rain throwing a wrench in the works — and so, for one night in October, 2nd Street will once again be threaded with dozens of audiocentric multimedia installations. 

“Initially we were unsure how this would work in a ‘secular’ — as opposed to an arts-forward — space or area,” says LBsoundbrowse co-producer Marco Schindelmann. “Everything we’d done previously was in an arts district or cultural center or museum —dedicated arts spaces — whereas Belmont Shore is more or less pure commerce and entertainment. We were concerned that we might be asked to compromise or whore ourselves to fit here, but because of Heather’s knowledge and valuing of what we do, we’re able to stage a pure art event in a very alien environment.”

That’s BSBA Executive Director Heather Kern he’s talking about, whose love of both FLOOD’s annual SoundWalk (East Village Arts District 2004–2013) and soundpedro (2017–present) events is what made her want to try it on 2nd Street. And she was intrigued by the novel possibilities inherent to staging such a happening in an area where there would be a mix of people present for the art and those who come for different reasons but stumble across it.

Kern and Schindelmann report that this year the intention is to have a more prominent outdoor presence — through both fixed and roaming works — while retaining the number of indoor installations. 

“Second Street doesn’t easily allow for the clustering of installations that have been a hallmark of SoundWalk and soundpedro,” Schindelmann says. “But we’re welcoming the challenge of creating ‘sound strands’ this year, which hopefully will produce more overall connectivity this year.”

A few examples of what’s on tap:

• • • • Deniz Tafaghodi’s “Scores for Dragging” is a participatory sound work in which simple found objects become temporary extensions of the body. Participants will select from a table of “found” objects (e.g., dried branches/leaves, string, tubes, paper, pipes), attach it to an ankle, and follow the score — a set of instructions for movement, listening, and interaction with the space — that comes with it, combining with other participants to create a spontaneously emergent soundscape.
      • An installation by Essvus “breaks down the borders between sound and space itself” by reprocessing sounds of the outside world “into a loop of warped noise sonics. […] As the transformed sound enters and interacts with the outside world, it goes back into the microphone, creating a complete cycle. The physical space around the performance and nearby people themselves become part of the performance, physical existence transmuted into sound. Rhythmic structures and synthesized tones added into the loop constitute the reverse transformation: unembodied sound becoming embodied space.”
      • Donned in a plexiglass structure with a variety of top-to-bottom paths, down which steel balls will fall, Genevieve Bartlett will be something like a roaming game of “ambulatory pachinko.”
      • Actuated by disabling a tape recorder’s eraser head, Aaron West’s “The Sonic Palimpsest” is “an infinite sound-on-sound accumulator,” with live, ambient violin textures imprinting onto the loop and stacking exponentially. “As the medium approaches physical saturation, historic layers dissolve into warm, distorted memories while sharp, new harmonics pierce the dense sonic mass. This slow stratification is disrupted by public intervention[, as p]assersby strike nearby resonant objects, triggering a variety of found sounds local to the area,” resulting in “an unpredictable dialogue between the weight of accumulated history and the immediate, kinetic energy of the street.”

But words always come up short in describing both individual installations and the overall experience, where the bustle and ambience that ostensibly isn’t part of the art needn’t be ignored but rather recontextualized. If sound-art does its job — or if you do your job as a listener — it’s not only itself but also a tool for helping you pay closer/better/different attention to the stream of sound(s) that’s constantly pouring into your ears even in ostensibly “non-art” moments.

“You’re really just browsing all the sound — including whatever sound is organic to 2nd Street,” Kern says. “[…] Until someone has experienced [a sound-art event], it doesn’t matter how much you tell them — they don’t quite get it. ‘Here’s what you can expect’ is not quite sufficient.”

Kern notes that this year’s increased use of outdoor space includes the clock courtyard near Roycroft Ave., the backside of the Bank of America (where the long-defunct pneumatic tubes remain in place), and the parking area behind TAVi Art, which attendees will access through a blacklight room. She also harbors the hope that LBsoundbrowse will help those unfamiliar with 2nd Street discover what it has to offer, while admitting that she would like it to offer more — a deficiency she wants to improve with more arts programming.

“Second Street is a really great place to wander around, but I think we have over 50 places to eat and not enough things to do,” she says. “[LBsoundbrowse] is the kind of activity that’s good for people who are just meandering around. You can come early and have dinner; you can come late and have drinks after. You can make a full evening out of coming to this. […] You can stay [with a particular installation] for five minutes or 50 minutes — it’s really up to you. You experience it for however long you want to be with it, and then you move on.”

Rain or shine, LBsoundbrowse 2026 takes place on October 10 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.