Monday, September 1, 2008

Sculpture from my Senior Show

2x4's, rotten wood, dirt, piano, wires, copper disc, motor.

This sculpture was over 20 feet tall, and even larger in the other dimensions. Inside the wooden mass/mess was a salvaged piano, retrofitted to play according to a device that I constructed (see below).

The footage below was taken during my BFA Thesis Exhibition at Alfred University on May 10, 2008. Unfortunately, there is very little documentation of this sculpture, which was only up for one week.









This is the device which played the piano. It features a copper disc painted with a non-conductive latex paint to mimic my print 'Emblem'. The copper disc was motorized to spin like a record player. As it spun the exposed copper came into contact with various wires. When this happened electricity was passed through the copper disc and through the wires to small switches (solenoids). These solenoids were attached to a salvaged piano, which was inside the sculpture. Each solenoid (10 in total) was hooked up to different key. When electricty was passed to the solenoids, they struck their respective keys of the piano, essentially 'playing the piano according to my print'.

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