A sound sculpture brings Frank Zappa back to life. By Hili Perlson
A palm tree slowly falls sideways and rests on an oversized pillow. An owl-shaped bamboo wind chime dances in the air among longish creatures painted white. A cactus swirls its arm and sounds a slanted hanging chime while multicoloured light bulbs go on and off. These are just a few of the myriad animated objects and kinetic sculptures that populate a white L-shaped stage in Geoffrey Farmer’s new piece “Let’s Make the Water Turn Black”. But the stage is only a prop. At least according to Farmer. The core of the work is in the sound that fills the room: conceived as an ever- growing archive or library, Farmer created a sound sculpture as a portrait of Frank Zappa.
If you didn’t know Farmer’s work before, his installation at Documenta 13 (a massive 3D collage made of LIFE magazine cut-outs chronologically lined up from 1935 to 1985) made the impact, and the new piece is similarly impressive in its funnelling of an intensive research-based process into the narrative-driven, mechanical-theatre-like pieces that he creates. “I see the piece as an instrument that I’m learning to play,” he says. That “instrument” is an expanding library of recorded material that he will continue growing over the next two years. “In the end I hope to have thousands of sound files. They will be accessible, and seeing them will create a portrait of Zappa constructed through sound.”
The piece begins with samples collected from 1939, a year before Zappa’s birth, and ends with his death in 1993. The early years include bits and pieces by avant-garde composers Zappa was interested in, like Schwitters and Cage, and Edgar Varèse, inventor of the term “organised sound”, while the approach echoes the ideas conceived by Musique concrète – another strong influence on Zappa’s compositions. Samples from radio shows give cues as to the chronological positioning, like the 1941 announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The piece is controlled by an algorithm that shuffles through each year’s samples, save for several choreographed sections which mark those enthralling moments when the stage comes to life. “The sculptures re influenced by my life: growing up on the West Coast, amusement parks and roadside attractions, and the land- scape. It’s a bricolage of materials and references.” The stage’s dream landscape is a fable Farmer constructs, its entrance guided by two lions. The last prop exists beyond the stage, in a shadow projected on to the wall, of a man climbing a rock, walking towards the end oftime. Farmer, an arranger of found material, “found” Zappa through the title of the song after which he named the piece, discovering similarities in their approaches. “Zappa talks about synchrony and about Strange Time, about arrangement.” He also saw this as a chance to learn about sound: “In a way all my work is an education. Here, I’m learning so much about history of music in North America.” Farmer’s dreamlike stage tempts one to linger and catch the fantastical animated objects as they perform their strange dance. Whether a portrait of Zappa will emerge from the experience remains open, as the work is in progress, but the artist’s interest in collecting, archiving and collage-ing the past invite contemplation on the visual and aural culture of the present.
Meanwhile, a cactus shrugged.
“Let’s Make the Water Turn Black” runs until August 18th 2013 at Migros Museum Für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich.
Taken from Sleek #38 “The One and The Many”. Available in stores now.