Project

A sound-based project led and coordinated by Loftus involving a range of participants from around the world. A call was sent out across the web, inviting people to send an MP3 file of their favorite (or most hated) bite of sound. This could be interpreted in a range of ways
(e.g. from a stolen sentence to an ambiguous noise). These sounds now inhabit an old upright piano located in the basement of Arthouse. Visitors to the building are able to play this collection of emotions from around the world and these ‘recitals’ will be broadcast into people’s daily lives via the Internet and a radio band.

Artist's statement

I've left miscellaneous recording devices in places, also found pieces of sound caught on peoples home videos, tape recorders, answering machines. Collected an archive deliberately or by accident. Sound seems to me to have a larger palette than colour and I want to apply it to an aural canvas in every way possible. How far can sound be pushed, molded, ground down and stuck back together ? I find it works better when caught by accident, making it more realistic, like a perfect skintone or painter's random brushstroke. Sometimes it's the silence between things, the sheer sub-bass in your face or the anonymous sadness of a real conversation left lingering on some old analogue letter. I close my eyes to taste it better, it's rather like smell, it evokes things, drags memories back at the speed of dark.

Description

An old upright piano in a large dark space, one light, and a seat. The sounds that I have received stored in samplers, they are from all around the world and from every aspect of life. Subject matter is irrelevant insofar as it's in the ear of the beholder. There is simple book in the form of sheet music, this contains the place, date and emotion of each artist and their sample. The speakers are placed in such a way that the sounds will travel above, below and all around the person playing the piano, to give the feeling of movement from place to place. I hope to achieve a very individual experience for each person that comes in contact with the work, like playing the emotions of the world in the dark .