Installation

Five hand-made electronic musical instruments made by myself and Brian Kane were installed in the gallery at ArtSpace New Haven as part of an exhibition titled Instructions Not Included. The exhibition ran from November 9 2012 – January 26 2013.

Here are some pictures of our contribution to the show.

 

Accompanying our instruments was a listening station with samples of audio from each instrument (and some instruments combined.) Here is the playlist patrons heard at the installation.

Modern Forest

PVC pipes, wood, green and brown spray paint, speakers, audio cables, metal screws and brackets, computer with exposed parts, stereo amplifiers, Gnu-Linux

Low-quality Video

Modern Forest grew from an initial idea to simply fill an indoor space with the sound of a forest. Trees have always been very special to me, deeply and inexplicably so. The initial conception for the piece grew to include ideas of environmental responsibility as I pondered the materials that would give body to my idea. I quickly abandoned all notions of realistic representation and chose a minimalist, almost abstract representation for the trees. For the sound, a simple combination of granular synthesis techniques, filters and pink noise were used. With the sound, as with the physical sculpture, realism was not a motivating factor. The work is a response to the beauty and complexity of nature as it shows the shortcomings of any attempt to synthesize or recreate nature while striving to become something altogether different.

The materials that were used in the construction of the sculpture are all unavoidably detrimental to our planet. The same materials are used every day by thousands of people throughout the world for various purposes.