the rearticulated piano (also mutant piano) (cast iron baby grand piano frame, mild steel, violin strings, springs)

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built in collaboration with pianist and performance artist coila-leah enderstein for a performance at the 12th edge of wrong music festival in cape town 2017. the departure point was the finding of a discarded baby grand piano’s iron frame, which provided a structure upon which we could build various rudimentary idiophones, chordophones and membranophones. the resulting sculpture could be struck, bowed or blown into to produce sounds. materials were collected from scrap yards, steel suppliers and music teachers. we designed the sculpture together, discovering principles of acoustic sound production through basic research combined with trial and error.

 

for the performance, we placed the sculpture adjacent to a prepared grand piano. amplified with contact microphones, which were connected to a series of hardware units, we performed a 20 minute improvised piece on the two “pianos.” 

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the instrument has since been kindly adopted by professor crain soudien, as a sculpture for his garden in athlone, cape town.  

 

video and stills by dirk hugo