Gallery 5 - Perciphone.
In the first Sounding Out module we explored the notion of voice and diegetics, shifting across devised narratives and and layering those with sound and music. This second of the two modules extrapolates some key qualities of that study – we will still originate sound and we will still design it into a shape, but in quite a different way. This time we are interested in creating a new acoustic source of our own, researching objects and acoustic enhancements for the production of sound. Then we will draw our creativity together, to once more attempt to frame that creativity into an orchestrated product. In doing so we will consider the spectrum from cacophony to symphony, from harmony to dissonance.
There is an artist of many years standing called Walt Shaw. Shaw is well known as a painter, a performer and as an experimental musician and percussionist, working out of the BET4 collective and collaborating in endless other projects. Having lived for some time in Africa, he has a great fascination with polyrhythm. For the past few decades he has made some extraordinary soundmaking devices and instruments, one of the most fascinating of which he calls the Viktorphone – this was exclusively used to produce and record works collectively known as Perciphone.
