Since the late '70s,
Gordon Monahan has been
making a
career of extracting the unheard from pretty much anything he can get his hands on.
Monahan's works for
piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art.
Such pieces include
long string installations activated by wind (Long Aeolian Piano, 1984-88), by
water vortices (Aquaeolian Whirlpool, 1990) and by
indoor air draughts (Spontaneously Harmonious in Certain Kinds of Weather, 1996). His work for
electronic tone generators and
human speaker swingers (Speaker Swinging, 1982), is a hybrid of science, music, and
performance art, where
minimalistic trance music based on the Doppler Effect contrasts with issues central to
performance art such as physical struggle and '
implied threat'.
John Cage once said, "
At the piano, Gordon Monahan produces sounds we haven't heard before."
Viewing the loudspeaker as a discrete instrument for generating or 'representing' music, Monahan has constructed a loudspeaker catapult (
A Magnet That Speaks Also Attracts, 1986) and a series of 'imitation' loudspeaker installations (
Music From Nowhere, 1989). During the 1990's he developed an ensemble of multi-functional computer-controlled sound-machines which undergo various transformations in performance and installation environments. In
Sounds and the Machines That Make Them (1994), a computer controls the actions of a network of machine sculptures built from electronic surplus and industrial trash, which generate complex layers of acoustically produced sounds. In
Multiple Machine Matrix (1996-98), a remote-controlled robot enters this environment and pretends to learn how to perform and behave on a public stage. Monahan created an interactive mechanical sound installation for the Sony Center in Berlin (
Silicon Lagoon, 2000), and has developed installations using computer-controlled water drops falling upon amplified objects (
When it Rains, 2000/
Theremin in the Rain, 2005). Recent works include multi-channel sound installations (
A Very Large Vinyl LP Constructed in Acoustic Space, 2007),
Theremin Pendulum, a chaotic theremin installation (2008), and
Gamelan Klavier (2009), a composition for gamelan and prepared piano.
posted by zangpo at 2:02 PM on April 29, 2011