NEW YORK—R. Luke DuBois’s sound installation SSB, on display at bitforms gallery through October 10, is meant to recall an Islamic call to prayer, but in the context of the exhibition “Politics As Usual” — and the current high-stakes, high-shenanigans election season — it sounds more like a primal scream.

SSB, which stretches a recording of the soprano Lesley Flanigan singing the “Star Spangled Banner” from its usual couple of minutes to four years, the length of a presidential term, stems from DuBois’s investigations of “time-lapse phonography.” A professor of interactive sound and video performance at Columbia University’s Computer Music Center and at the School of Visual Arts with a Ph.D. in music composition, DuBois has long experimented with the manipulation of audio data, and co-authored Jitter, a software suite for that purpose.

The visual focus of “Politics As Usual,” DuBois’s first solo gallery show, is “Hindsight Is Always 20/20,” an installation of 41 prints that interpret the language used by U.S. presidents in their State of the Union addresses (William Henry Harrison and James Garfield didn’t live to issue theirs) in the format of Snellen eye charts, the pyramid-shaped charts used to measure eyesight.

Each chart presents, in order, the 66 terms most uttered by the president in question, exempting those common to everyday speech (“the,” “his,” “United States”) and any that have appeared in previous charts. Letterpress printed in blocky black capital letters on white paper, the charts are hung in a tight chronological arrangement that assaults the eyes with a sine wave of morale-boosting and fear-mongering terminology. Washington’s top term, “gentleman,” gives way to Madison’s “enemy.” Lincoln’s “emancipation,” “rebellion,” and “proclamation” curiously presage Hoover’s “unemployment,” “recovery,” and “major.” Clinton’s casual “21st,” “got,” and “lot,” turn into George W. Bush’s “terror,” “Iraq,” and “Iraqi” (followed by “terrorist,” “al Qaida,” “regime,” Hussein,” “mass,” and “homeland”).

Another version of “Hindsight” is on view at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis through January 4, 2009. And a third, with the Snellen charts presented in six-foot-tall freestanding light boxes, is outside the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia through Election Day.

Here are DuBois’s picks for New York this weekend.

1. Signs of Change at Exit Art, through December 6

“An absolutely brilliant, near-comprehensive exhibit focusing on the visual artifacts of social movements from the 1960s to the present, 'Signs of Change,' curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee, presents over 700 posters, fliers, T-shirts, and other ephemera from social justice and activist movements from around the world, arranged around seven themes, from land rights movements to student activism to anti-globalization. The exhibit is fantastic and includes video, a screening series, and research materials on activist movements. Moreover, as a ‘non-art’ exhibit containing the real McCoy of activist literature and iconography, it acutely and accurately demonstrates the challenge facing political artists: Directly addressing a political cause, rather than merely commenting on its mediatized aura, is far more challenging than it seems.”

2. Party HQ: Voting Is Just the Beginning at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, through November 4

“A case in point, Party HQ presents 12 artists’ takes on the political media, propaganda, and persuasion tactics in American culture. While some of the work (like the mass spectacle it interrogates) is suitably over-the-top, the most powerful work in the show, curated by Eleanor Heartney and Larry Litt, is understated, even precious, from Kevin Bradley’s wonderful letterpress 'Presidential Wrestling' posters, to Cheryl Harper’s clay-and-stoneware teapots and Obama and Hillary Clinton sphinxes, to Ligorano/Reese’s The State of Things, a video showing an ice block of the word ‘DEMOCRACY’ melting. The most powerful piece in the show, however, is Claude Van Lingen’s participatory wall drawing that invites viewers to layer on in pencil the names of fallen American soldiers from a list provided in the gallery; the result is a Pollock-esque memorial.”

3. Doug Aitken: Migration at 303 Gallery, through November 1

“Doug Aitken drives me a little crazy, pushing all my buttons about the merits of spare-no-expense spectacle done with alarmingly little self-awareness. Nonetheless, the guy makes some beautiful shit, and his show (occupying both 303 Gallery venues) is no exception. In the 21st Street space, the 3-channel film Migration, projected on huge billboards, provides a slightly out-of-synch, 25-minute exposé on what happens when you take a bison back to your Motel 6 with you. Parallels to Koyanisqaatsi (complete with mind-numbing minimalist soundtrack) are inevitable, and the film lapses into the beautiful and does its best to keep you there. The 22nd Street space continues the thread, with a centrifugal chamber containing a series of jigsaw-like watercolors and very-expensive-looking illuminated signs.”

4. Xu Zhen, Folkert de Jong, Martha Colburn at James Cohan Gallery, through October 4

“The politics of commerce, memory, and fear are on display in a smart, cynical, and slightly dark three-person show at James Cohan. The foyer gallery features a fully stocked, fully staffed (!) replica of a Shanghai mini-mart created by Chinese artist Xu Zhen that brings the ubiquitous icon of globalized-yet-nationalist commerce halfway around the world as mixed-media spectacle of capitalism. Folkert de Jong’s The Shooting… At Watou provides a huge, grotesque, insulation-foam anti-monument to a World War I battle. Rounding out the show, Martha Colburn’s smart, cool, and disturbing film Myth Labs is a hand-animated montage linking American consumption and drug culture with the concept of Manifest Destiny.”

5. David LaChapelle: Auguries of Innocence at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, through October 24

“LaChapelle’s latest work doesn’t break much new ground for the artist (and is arguably a bit less focused than his last few shows), but it’s a great ride showing how someone with his brain sees the world during wartime. A series of large, hellishly weird, and extremely funny Digital C-prints and three-dimensional pop-up books present crushed cars, catalog models posing as GI Joes, and a re-creation of Gulliver’s capture with the Lilliputians played by Barbie dolls in Muslim veils. The centerpiece of the show, Holy War (the left half of which has been flyered around Chelsea so much that you don’t even really need to go to the gallery to see it), is pretty much the last word in massive battery-powered cardboard cutouts. It’s the best pornography you’ll see for a while.”