Can't Fight The Moonlight

Sara Naim: Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata (2008)

The artist's statement:

"This body of work looks at translating sound into a photographic image. Ludwig Van Beethoven’s symphony vibrates through milk. He composed this piece in the early 1800’s for his blind pupil and lover, Giuletta Gucciardi. Gucciardi said to Beethoven that she wished she could see the moonlight. Beethoven then composed a piece about the moonlight’s reflection off Austria’s Lake Lucerne, called Moonlight Sonata."

The series of twelve photos begins here. Sound and spilled milk together at last.

(via tasteologie)

Just Me And My Guitar

I started this post looking for photos or video of Christian Marclay's phonoguitar (a modified turntable he could strap around his neck and "play" [he especially liked recreating Hendrix tunes]), but: turns out that's difficult.

I did, however, find a video of one of his newer works, Guitar Drag (2000). Yes, that's an amplified Fender with a rope around the frets, dragged behind a pick-up truck over rural roads in Texas. Obviously.
The piece is a sort of homage to guitar mythologies, instrument smashing and shock performance, as well as a response to the 1998 lynching-by-dragging of James Byrd, Jr. And (with no good way to segue back into the relatively trivial) Guitar Drag is also about sound: fourteen minutes of what the Washington Post calls "found-art power chords." There's even a commercial recording out there somewhere.

Start To Push / Break Your Own Glass Ceiling

Ken Unsworth is an Australian artist who specializes in installation and sculpture works. "I'm not worried about meaning," he said in one interview. "I just like to make these strange things." Strange and often musical - turns out his late wife, an inspiration for many of his pieces, was a pianist. Examples A and B: "Rapture" (for piano, straw, burnt sheet music, and plastic mice) is a sculpture made of keyboard-stairs, and "Piano Trio (Teaching Three Pianos to Sing in Unison)" involves three grand pianos, motorized parts, three metronomes, and sheet music.

And then I give you Example C: Unsworth's 2009 exhibit "A Ringing Glass (Rilke)" includes an installation with twenty-eight toy pianos (I counted) suspended from the ceiling. The Schoenhut tinkle starts at 4:45, but the whole video is worth watching: even in the installations dealing with, oh you know, humanity and life and death and things, sound and music play a huge role:

Art Of Listening

I haven't been this entertained by a music video in a long time.

(Extra credit: Did you spot Alma Mahler?)

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

(via Neu Black)

Stormy Weather

QUOTE:

"Recently, I have begun translating weather data collected in cities into musical scores, which are then translated into sculptures as well as being a source for collaboration with musicians. These pieces are not only devices that map meteorological conditions of a specific time and place, but are also functional musical scores to be played by musicians. While musicians have freedom to interpret, they are asked not to change the essential relationship of the notes to ensure that what is still heard is indeed the meteorological relationship of weather data."

UNQUOTE

Nathalie Miebach works across disciplines like it's her job. You can see more scores, sculptures, and hear the music realized on her website.

Music Of My Heart

The Heart Chamber Orchestra might be a little bit of a niche-group.
See here: The twelve musicians hook themselves up to ECG sensors monitoring their heartbeats. That information is fed to a software program designed to generate a score in real time and send it to the laptop screens placed in front of the musicians.

The idea is that the music literally "comes from the heart." KIND OF CHEESY? But also kind of wonderful: I think this would be an amazing (if somewhat style-limited) live performance - the concept, the visuals, the sound...

(Question: I wonder what would happen if one of the musicians had a heart attack?)

Heart Chamber Orchestra from pure on Vimeo.

(via notcot and wired)

And Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect

David Leventi's latest project is entitled "Bjoerling’s Larynx: World Famous Opera Houses": a photo series documenting famous and not-so-famous (but always opulent) theaters. The Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans will display the photos August 7 - September 11, 2010, but you can see them online at the artist's website here.

(via neatorama and pdn)

Carve Away The Stone

These really are gorgeous: hand-carved records by Scott Marr. See the whole series.

(via boingboing)

Pictures In An Exhibition

Picasso: Still Life On A Piano

Play Me A Song / You're The Piano Man

Play Me I'm Yours! by Luke Jerram

"From 21st June – 5th July, 60 upright pianos will be distributed across New York City by Sing for Hope. Located in public parks, streets and plazas the pianos will be available for any member of the public to play and engage with....Disrupting people’s negotiation of their city, the pianos are also aimed to provoke people into engaging, activating and claiming ownership of their urban landscape."

New York is the latest in a line of cities (including London, São Paulo, and Sydney) getting the piano treatment - and it makes me giddy-happy. Imagine walking down the street: oh a piano! And you stop to play a little ditty, keep on walking down the street...
If you're in NYC this summer, find one and send me a picture please.

(via boingboing; Montage by Luke Jerram)

(Bonus: scores and pictures of Annea Lockwood's Piano Transplants series.)

Meet Me At My Window

Selfridges invited bands to design store-front windows based on one of their songs! What have we got... Marina and the Diamonds, Florence and the Machine, Hot Chip, Empire of the Sun. Which window goes with which band is still up for debate (there's even a contest), but you get the idea.





(via notcot)
(photos: cakeheadlovesevil)

Ah Get On The Floor And Dance

Maureen is right: how do I get this installed in my room?
Designed by Theo Watson for the first Rotterdam Electronic Music Festival (2006); you control the music by walking on the surface of this floor/record player.

Vinyl Workout from Theo Watson on Vimeo.

(via flavorwire)

To Me You Are A Work Of Art

Ghost in the Machine- Lauryn Hill
Cassette tape on canvas, 2010.

Beethoven
Paperwork, 2010.


Erika Iris Simmons does amazing things.


(via metafilter)

Blue In The Face

Rock-album-cover-typography revealed: Rock That Font.

(via metafilter)

Playing That Organ Music Must Count For Something

Any musical instrument/art exhibit that's described as "the giant lovechild of a bagpipe and a pipe organ" is alright by me.

The Überorgan by Tim Hawkinson



(via weburbanist)

Ocean Of Noise

In keeping with the theme of the day: William Hogarth's 1741 etching "The Enraged Musician." Poor violinist in the window!

Accentuate The Positive

Carlos Aires
Love is in the Air
2007
cut vinyl record silhouettes




(via weburbanist)

Recyle / Recyle / Recycle Rap

Derrick R. Cruz makes necklaces out of recycled piano keys!



(via trendhunter)

Every Grain Of Sand

Yes, that's Chopin, painted by Eugène Delacroix. Originally, this was a two paneled painting; at some point, the larger work was cut into two halves - both of which are extant, though separated.
The other half, you ask? Chopin's lover: the writer George Sand.



(more Delacroix paintings)

It's A Good Time For A Photo

The Jazz Loft Project:

"From 1957 to 1965 legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith [that's him in the photo] made approximately 4,000 hours of recordings on 1,741 reel-to-reel tapes and nearly 40,000 photographs in a loft building in Manhattan's wholesale flower district where major jazz musicians of the day gathered and played their music. Smith's work has remained in archives until now. The Jazz Loft Project is dedicated to uncovering the stories behind this legendary moment in American cultural history."