Grave

Gazelli Art House, London, 2015
Wexford Art Centre, Wexford, Ireland, 2017

John Wynne

 

The title of this piece, Grave, is the slowest setting on traditional metronomes. Grave is Italian for 'serious', but although it's slow, this piece is not entirely straight-faced. The sound consists of a complex feedback field created by 3 sources within the cabinet: the frequencies of the feedback are determined by the resonant frequencies of the enclosure and are modulated by the ticking of the mechanical metronome. One feedback loop is created by the microphone / camera / projector, and this is supplemented by two tiny hearing aids lying beneath the violin. The noise gates within the hearing aids ensure that their sound, which feeds into the microphone, is itself constantly changing, making it sound not unlike a tiny violinist sawing away at the tiny violin.

 

 

A later, modified version of Grave was installed at the Wexford Arts Centre in Ireland in 2017 as part of HAMMER | ANVIL | STIRRUP. This group exhibition featured the work of "a key group of Irish and international artists whose current practices evoke a vitality and freshness in their engagement with concerns surrounding sound; from composition, physics and sculpture to noise, acousmatics and listening."  Works by David Beattie, Richard Carr, Edgardo Rudnitzky, John Wynne