We’re excited to share the end result of our Solar-Powered Theremin Workshop, which are the third set of Musical Chairs, entitled “Cathode”. “Musical Chairs” has been a long-running audio/art project featuring several different variants of painted prison bus seats with a musical component. It started back in 2008 with myself, Jim Duignan and Stockyard Institute, and ran for several years. While dormant as of late, it is in-part the reason I met my wife, Beth Wiedner. She acted as the producer and art director for several sets of these chairs. We wrote for some grants, did a ton of installs all over the city, and we were even given a sponsorship of sorts from the fine folks at Freedman Seating. Yes, we got prison bus seats from a company called Freedman. Life is neat sometimes.
As you may know, we had been working with Ian Bennett of Anode Design quite a bit for Nomadic Studio, but also just in general as an artist. We had commissioned Ian to paint our third set of chairs he dubbed “Cathode”. Since it’s science day here, an anode is an electrode where current enters into a device, and a cathode is where current leaves a device. Seemed like a fitting name for a set of chairs that were to be equipped with a pair of sun-powered musical instruments. With the chairs out in the sun, the seats play two notes, generating a single chord. They hum!
These chairs lived in the little gallery portal of “Anode” during the exhibit, but also went to a Sixty Inches From Center show at Gallery 33 towards the end in true nomadic fashion. Ian painted these in his actual Anode gallery using a variety of stencils and paints, and it looks sort of like a cubist take on sun shooting through leaves. I added the prices shot of Ian mostly because I like it, and also because when we took the photo, he wanted to point out that he was wearing a protective mask while spray painting because it’s safe and he wanted to set a good example for kids. No kidding. Mask up, kids!
Faiz
