Events

ISLAND BLOCK

Charbel Ackermann

The Launch Pad, The Building Centre, London

Exhibition: 18 - 30 June 2007
Discussion event: Saturday 23 June, 2 - 4 pm
Closing event and music performance: Saturday 30 June, 2 - 4 pm

Curated by Danielle Arnaud

 

Press release

Images

Video

Installation views

Reviews

 

Discussion Event:

23 June 2 - 4pm

A discussion event was held with the two lead architects of the Island Block, John Knight and William Sutherland together with Danielle Arnaud and Charbel Ackermann. The discussion revisited important moments of the building's planning, design, construction and use. The videoed discussion covered antecedents, office concepts, the GLC's Architecture Department, and the brief period of occupation of the building by the GLC.

 

Closing Event and Music Performance:

30 June 2 - 4 pm

Music event in collaboration with two musicians with extensive experience in sound sculpture and working with visual artists, Hildegard Kleeb and Roland Dahinden, who performed pieces inspired by the geometry and location of the building, and sonically explored and 'revive' the dimensions and spaces of this lost built space.

Roland Dahinden performed Wind Shadows by Alvin Lucier (1994)
Two pure wave oscillators are tuned a tenth of a cycle apart. As each tone sounds from a separate loudspeaker, a beating pattern is heard to spin across the room once every ten seconds. As it does so, the trombonist plays long tones in near unison with the spinning waves, causing secondary beats to sound. The player is asked to sweep slowly within an extremely narrow range, from three cycles per second above the null point between the spinning waves to three cycles below it. Wind Shadows was written expressly for Roland Dahinden who is one of the few players capable of producing the close tunings demanded in the score.

Hildegard Kleeb performed Opera with Objects by Alvin Lucier, written in 1997 a piece in which the performer taps on different objects that they find, exploring the timbre resonance of those objects.

The performance was concluded by a performance by both musicians of John Cage's Ryoanji named after a meditation garden in Kyoto in a version for solo trombone, recorded trombone voices and percussion. That percussion comprised two vessels which were tapped. The musicians used two overdubbed trombones recorded by Roland Dahinden. The percussion, which continues to two measures after the score's end, is meant to portray the sand as the trombones are the stones. This "sand" is carefully placed, allowing for a resonance and a soft place for the placement of the "stones."

 

Clips