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Performance by Adrian Palka (Steel Cello), David Chapman and Mark Bowler (Bow Chimes) CongressCATH 2003, Leeds Town Hall, June 2003
This joint paper, and accompanying performance, aims to explore the ambiguous categorisation of ‘sound sculpture’, viewing this as a hybrid object which opens up boundaries between discrete fields of creative activity. It will focus on a case study of the Steel-cello and Bow-chime. Constructed out of steel sheets, wires and rods, these were conceived as ‘played’ sound sculptures in the late 1960s by veteran US abstract-expressionist, Bob Rutman.
Sound brings to sculpture a time-based dimension and a relationship with acoustic-space, which is denied to the traditional sculptural object. The conception of the Steel-cello and Bow-chime as playable objects places them equally within the disciplines of music and performance, and within a history of invented instruments which challenged the organisation, instrumentation and sonorities of western musical traditions. This intrinsic inter-disciplinarity has provoked in their performance history, a complex set of interactions which have traversed visual art, architecture, music, dance, and theatre. This paper/performance examines this history and the shifting status of the Steel-cello/Bow-chime from ‘art object’ (a unique work attached to an individual creator) to ‘musical instrument’ (a multiple object used and developed by a number of practitioners in a variety of contexts and combinations). Adrian Palka is prominent amongst these practitioners and has performed over many years in a wide range of inter-disciplinary projects. A short illustrative performance of the Steel-cello and Bow-chime accompanies this paper.
© 2005
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