 ARCO Madrid |
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'Unprepared Piano', 2004, Software application, computer, grand piano, dimensions variable
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11 - 16 February 2009
Feria Madrid
ARC Projects presented a solo booth by artists Thomson & Craighead at ARCO 2009 in Madrid.
www.ifema.es
In Unprepared Piano, a Yamaha disklavier grand piano is connected to a database of music MIDI files appropriated from the internet. This library of electronic scores is then “performed” automatically according to a simple set of rules. The musical scores contain a wide variety of instrumentations, not intended simply for piano, so the Unprepared Piano is told to perform each piece by randomly choosing from its different parts. Thus it might play fragments of drum parts and percussion alongside chords and melodies intended for other instruments.
The result is a transformation, where traces of the original remain, but form part of a new generative piece of music that could be thought of as an automatic random improvisation. The piano reinterprets each score every time it is played, and whilst there is no person playing the piano, it retains a kind of innate authority because we recognise it as a complex and traditional instrument built and perfected over hundreds of years for the virtuoso.
The title of the work refers to the 'Prepared Pianos' developed for the most part by the artist John Cage, and although software is used in this case to alter the scores, rather than objects being used to alter the timbre of the instrument, one can think of these rules or instructions contained in the software as analogous to John Cage's preparations in his prepared pianos.
Jon Thomson (b. 1969) and Alison Craighead (b. 1971) are artists living and working in London and Kingussie in the highlands of Scotland. They make artworks and installations for galleries, online and sometimes outdoors. Much of their recent work looks at live networks like the web and how they are changing the way we all understand the world around us.
They have exhibited widely internationally, including Neuberger Museum of Modern Art, New York; Stroom, The Hague; New Museum, New York; San Jose Museum of Art; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Museum of Contemporary Art, Massachusetts; Tate Britain, London; Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Barbican Gallery, London; Manifesta, Rotterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Kunstlerhaus, Hamburg.
ARC Projects Major Sponsor LIA company, Sofia. Presentation at ARCO supported by Yamaha, and the National Culture Fund of Bulgaria.
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