a sound installation
by Jessica RylanBRI:AIR
Projects from the Berwick Research Institute's Artist in Research ProgramMills Gallery
Boston Center for the Arts
Feb 4 - Mar 27, 2005
Curator:
Meg RotzelExhibition Design:
Ben Durrell and Matthew ChristensenFeaturing:
Vaughn Bell, John Osorio Buck, Christy Georg, Carolyn Lambert and Fereshteh Toosi, Ken Linehan, Jessica Rylan, Aliza Shapiro, Amy Sharp, Jonah Rapino, and Devil Music
I was invited to the Mills gallery again, in a Berwick retrospective show. All the former artists in research had pieces in the show. For my piece I decided to do a new sound installation. I didn't get a private room this time, but it was actually better, because I was less secluded from everyone else.
I wanted to do a nature diorama. The weather got pretty mild in January, and I was thinking more like spring. But two weeks before the show opened, it rained for a week, then went into deep freeze. I decided it would have to be more of a stark, wintery scene instead.
You can't tell in the photos, but the tree branches I found are covered with fuzz, like the antlers of a young deer. I got them on a back road, somewhere around Ancram NY. We put them up so they come straight out of the wall. Then I put in the birds, like they were roosting on their home turf.
I based the birds on a circuit originally developed by John Simonton, Jr. He's the driving force behind Paia, who have been making synthesizer kits for 30 years now. I added a section to his original design so that the birds would be quiet more of the time, and also their songs would vary more. I did it by modulating the supply voltage, a popular circuit-bending trick. One bird chirps more frequently, sometimes sounding like a seagull. The other bird sings less frequently, but it has a long graceful warble like something that likes to stay hidden deep in the forrest. Every once in a while, one of them makes an odd noise, sometimes a gasp and sometimes a ringing cell phone.
Underneath the tree branches, the Natural Synthesizer sits on top of a bright blue speaker, surrounded by branches and draped in vines. The synthesizer's noise is more constant. There's a rushing, gurgly part, like a nearby brook that you can't quite see, and a gentle whistle that fades in and out very quietly, like an old radiator. In addition, every once in a while the synthesizer makes a sharp thunk. It was hard to adjust the thunks, because they're so infrequent you get bored of waiting. As I was working on the piece, I'd get worried, I hadn't heard one in 15 minutes. Just as I was about to adjust it to happen more often, it would thunk three times in a minute. So you might have to wait a long time to hear that! And the longer you stay, the more you'll hear in the piece. This one goes a lot deeper than I got to before.
Thanks to Adra and Laura at the BCA, Meg for organizing such a great show, Zachary Piper for taking these photos, and most of all Ben and Matthew for their invaluable help!