From sunday 29th ‘ till july 6th a groupexhibit will be running at the Royal Academy in The Hague, where I will be participating in.
The electromechanical device is to be split up in different modes.
1. running as an installation
2. Pry. Fixed composition
3. Edit. where I try to perform the possibilities of the instrument in under 11 minutes.
4. Playtime. A long set of an hour where I play with the instrument and go looking for things I haven’ t heard before. Due to the length of these sets, people are free to walk in and out.
The last two modes are improvised sets.
Sunday 29th june: running as installation: 12:00 - 16:00
Monday 30th: running as installation: 10:00-20:00
Walk in session/ improvised set 12:30
Tuesday 1st: running as installation: 12:00-20:15
Performance at: 14:50
Wednesday 2nd: running as installation: 12:00-20:15
Performance at: 15:10
Thursday 3rd: running as installation: 12:00-20:15
Performance at: 14:40
Friday 4th: performance at: 15:40
Saturday 5th: 12:00-16:00 recording sessions (open to public)
Sunday 6th: 12:00-16:00 recording sessions (open to public)
A small update on what I ‘ m currently working on.
In short, I am working on an electromechanical installation that will be presented as a sound performance.
Tests have been run, by me on a metal plate that is one by two meters. I am sending waveforms into these plates.
Experimented with electromagnets I built myself with coils. Tried out sextoys, the insides of various doorbells and other solenoids.
After three weeks of trials I ‘m getting a clearer image of how everything is going to pan out.
Mostly I ‘ ve gotten a clearer image of how plate reverberation works. Very interesting and joyful experiment but still, long way to go.
The whole art of self-destruction/ auto-destructive art-thing started during my time at the Rietveld Academy.
In the sculpture classes we were given the assignment to take apart an object and enlarge it three times.
I started with one Thonet chair, found one-half more and made a re-composite.
The base of this sculpture were originally armrests. Because they were somewhat oval, using them, upside down, turned the object into a rocking chair. Because of it’s height, it didn’t stand. That’s why I attached two other parts from the Thonet chair to keep it stable.
The teacher that gave the assignment, Ton Zwerver, liked the result and told me about some projects he did that reminded him of the chair-object I made.
He explained his fascination he had with balance. I could also appreciate this idea so I did some more experiments where used some left-over wood and cardboard to balance these things into a composite.
followed by again larger objects.
Years later at Interfaculty these ideas of balance came back. First with the mobiles, later
when I started to take the Electric Music Theatre courses by Horst Rickels and Paul Koek, I did basically the exact same thing as with the wood and cardboard, only this time with metal plates and other metal junk. I also attached piezzo elements so the whole thing became audible and the actual constructing part would now become the centre of the artwork. So.., not so much the result but more the process became relevant.
Late last year we were asked to do a performance for TIKTAK@Ground Two Festival. Because we were pressed for time it was wise to do something that was already done, rather than to come up with a new idea.
I was working with Thijs Elich for this at the time and he liked the idea when I explained it to him.
Because the setting was a bit different than with the course, he came up with some thoughts on how to adapt the performance.
We did it again with some slight changes at Goebbels Festival last march during Suite Interfacing.
Below you can see an exerpt.
Auto-Destructive Installlation #3.3 Performance by Louis Marlon & Thijs Elich.
Excerpt edited by Chris Pieplenbosch
I’ ve started on building the installation for the concluding part of the self-disposition triptych.
The story is derived from the greek mythology of Narcissus and Oscar Wilde’ s A Picture of Dorian Gray.
Although these stories are about self admiration, the story I am writing is more about the inability to have a correct self-image.
It also refers to ideas from the Enlightenment.
A good subtitle would be: three tales, crossreferenced through the Gospel of Thomas.
