the Endless Intervals (Built on Bones)
American Visionary Art Museum 2008-2009
Joe Wall and Patty Kuzbida’s collaborative artwork, the Endless Intervals (Built on Bones), is currently on display as a part of the 2008-2009 exhibition, The Marriage of Art, Science, and Philosophy at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.
The exhibition represents a broad and diverse selection of artwork made with, inspired by, and otherwise connected to the intersecting disciplines of art, science, and philosophy, and the Endless Intervals… is itself a work in intersecting ideas. Integrating the intricate shell and stained glass mosaic artwork of artist Patty Kuzbida with cabinetry, form, electronics, and additional mosaic by Joe Wall, the piece is a celebration of contrasting forms, with sound-making electronics feeding a system of self-evolving musical patterns, all open to play and experimentation by the museum visitor.
A theremin is integrated with a complex, self-guiding system of synthesized sound running on a generalized digital modular synthesizer that add rhythmic elements to the mix, all controlled in unpredictable ways by a control panel of five knobs, two switches, and one big button. Each control influences the sound and the patterns playing on the piece, though not always in the most obvious way. Sometimes a knob changes a sound, or alters the timbre of the theremin sound source, and sometimes it changes the way other controls work. The complete function of the overall system is purposely obscure and undocumented, so that the observer is forced to play and experiment to determine how the overall instrument works, and what it is capable of doing instead of merely consuming an artwork as a passive spectator.
Because of the digital framework of the piece, updates and changes to the software that runs the complex sound generator are quite easy, and so the piece can be modified often, at least weekly in the current exhibition. From the opening of the show to the end, Play the Endless Intervals… will become as many instruments as it has players, shifting in tone and texture and pattern as the artist dreams up new ways of interconnecting the modules, sequencers, and physical controls, evolving from one thing to the next over eleven months.
This page will be updated soon with more details, photographs, and sound samples to explain and describe the piece, so look in again for changes. If you have specific questions about the piece, you can contact Joe Wall via the contact page on this site, or Patty Kuzbida, whose wonderfully-detailed mosaic work covers the end pieces and frame around the control panel, by way of Joe.
See also thereminworld.com for more information about theremins.
