Posted: April 21, 2015
I've been invited by Rotterdam artist, Floris Visser for an episode of radio voicemail, a radio show of around 2 minutes broadcasted on the medium of voicemail. I have a simple idea however needs working out in a collaborative way.
Around 1800's, "an artist invented, in order to dispel the melancholy of a prince who was beset by worries, a cat piano. Instead of strings, his instrument contained a number of cats’ tails inserted into narrow sheaths, beneath which there went up and down the hammers corresponding to keys, bearing on their extremities a sharp point. The cats are chosen by sex and age and arranged side by side in separate boxes according to the pitch of their voice."
Departing from the idea of the cat piano, I would like to create a human piano. The rough idea is that as a human-piano, each persons' hand or fingers becomes a piano key that when touched by the player, produces sound. Each human-piano-key can come up with their own sound(s) or decide collectively, or indeed change during the composition unpredictably. So the question arises, who is instrumentalising who?, the player or the 'instrument'....
