Haroon Mirza - An Infinato

Haroon Mirza - An Infinato, 2009

Mixed Media, Including footage by Jeremy Deller and damaged off-cuts from 'Cycles 1 1972/77' by Guy Sherwin. 

Mirza's sculptural assemblages take their from from a range of found objects, out-dated musical equipment, appliances and furniture. Each configuration fills the space around it with a cacophony of electronic sound by re-working the appliances' original function. In 'An Infinato' Mirza uses a metal dustbin filled with water to create a chaotic composition whereby a jet of water bubbling inside the bin hits the exposed circuitry of a now 'retro' Casio keyboard.

The assemblage of audio and material paraphernalia explores an order whereby social or cultural become aligned with aural traditions. We are asked to re-consider the objects employed by Mirza and the mechanisms in play which produce the sound, often warping the gap between object and sound. 

Haroon Mirza - Canon Remix,  2009

John Cage - Water Walk

John Cage performs Water Walk on American TV Show I've Got A Secret

1960

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot - From Ear to Ear

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot - From Ear to Ear

May 2010, Barbican Curve Gallery

Commissioned by the Barbican Curve gallery, Boursier-Mougenot composed a installation with 40 Zebra Finches and a range of electric Les-Paul guitars. Trained as a classical composer the artist has been staging sound installations since the early 90's based on the rhythms of daily life. 

As the birds fly and feed from their electric perches they create a live soundscape, interactive with its audience.  

Cory Arcangel - Drei Klavierstücke op. 11

Cory Arcangel Drei Klavierstücke op. 11 I

2009

Drei Klavierstücke op. 11 II and III

Arnold Schoenberg's Drei Klavierstücke (1909) is widely recognised as the first piece of atonal music. In making this piece Arcangel devised and wrote a computer program that would scour the hundreds of videos of cats playing the piano that he downloaded from YouTube and identify the notes played. He then entered in a rendition of Glenn Gould playing Schoenberg's composition and automated the software to recreate the piece using the video clips. 

The software is available as an open source tool via his website. There is also a version of the piece with Gould in one ear and the cats in the other to allow you to make a direct comparison. Ever interested in different audiences' reactions and diverse modes of dissemination, Arcangel has said that he is fascinated by the differing response that the work has received in galleries, on YouTube and when it was featured on the website Cute Overload.

Arcangel says: "This project fuses a few different things I have been interested in lately, mainly “cats”, copy & paste net junk, and youtube’s tendency in the past few years to host videos that are as good and many times similar to my favorite video artworks... I’m talking about The Infinite Cat Project, Cats in Sinks, Cat in Fan, Ninja cat comes closer while not moving!, Smart Cat Open Door, Fat Cat VS Small Box, Pussy versus Printer, Edison’s The Boxing Cats (Prof. Welton’s),It’s been a long day, Panta improvising on the piano featuring my cat (my personal favorite cat video), the Ultimate Canon Rock, Sopranos every profanity, The Big Lebowski – Every Single Fucking Dude,Marclay’s “hello” supercut, 50 50s, Check out my new stereo – Extreme Bass! (also see Goldstein’s “A Glass of Milk” here), Watching the Paint Dry (also see Burt Barr’s Watching The Paint Dry serieshere), even Andy Eating a Hamburger, & Infinite Warhol (you might have noticed we are back 2 the beginning of this list)."

Tim Ivison & Julia Tcharfas - Metropotamia

Tim Ivison & Julia Tcharfas - Metropotamia

2011, Hilary Crisp Gallery, London

Metropotamia by Tim Ivison and Julia Tcharfas was an assemblage of fragmented architectural models. Mostly constructed in the gallery space the scaled down utopian monuments were a playground for the resident alley cats for the duration of the show. 

The title 'Metropotamia' refers to one of the many rejected titles by Thomas Jefferson for the Ohio Country, an area haunted by the post-industrial decay of lower Michigan and Detroit. The damaged models and references to visionary social ideology placed on a grid on the gallery floor explore how value and determination are highly subjective. 

Tatiana Trouvé - Polders

Tatiana Trouvé 

Polder 2007

Highly designed interior spaces are a recurring image in the work of Italian-born Paris-based Artist, Tatiana Trouvé.

Her ongoing series of Polders - half-sized renditions of spaces and abstract objects - began as works made from left-over parts of her larger-scaled installations and sculptures. In Dutch the term 'polder' refers to an area of formerly water-locked land rendered accessible through human intervention. The spaces are populated by abstracted forms that seem to allude to familiar objects found in domestic, industrial and corporate environments through the artist's highly polished execution and choices of materials (glass, copper tubing, fluorescent lighting, rocks, leather coverings, plastics). The shifts in scale and suggested and yet incomprehensible sense of utility that the woks have makes for a disconcerting experience that is suggestive of psychological disturbance or instability.

  Polder 2005

Manfred Pernice - Tutti

Manfred Pernice - Tutti

2011, SMAK Ghent

Pernice's practice often revolves around ideas of architecture and presentation. His work employes distinct motifs with overt reference to interiority and domesticity.

Tutti currently showing at SMAK in Ghent (until 8/1/12) includes a large-scale cylindrical sculpture split into four quadrants. A structure which he has used many times before in his work has become a way to articulate and readdress the content which within it, and to reflect on the relationship between architecture, sculpture and visual art.

El Lissitzky - Proun Room

El Lissitzky Proun Room

1923 (reconstructed 1971)

'Proun' is a term coined by Russian Suprematist artist El Lissitzky in the early part of the twentieth century. 'Proun' does not have an exact definition, though Lissitzky stated that it was "the station where one changes from painting to architecture" or according to Wikipedia 'exploration of the visual language of suprematism with spatial elements'. The Proun works preoccupied him throughout most of his career and became formative in the development of the Utopian architectural projects he took up in later life.

In Proun Room (or Prounenraum) the artist, designer and typographer, given a small room in which to display his work,  rendered the ideas he had explored in 2 dimensions into 3. Navigating and circumscribing the walls with wooden constructions, Lissitzky plays with the perspectives and planar shifts we find in his drawings and prints throughout the room. The work remains a prototype for the installation art that would come later in the century.

None of the original 1923 piece survived after its exhibition. Several reconstructions have been made based around a few photographs of the original installation, a lithograph and a painting since 1965 (more on that here).