steve
roden
observatory,
1999
exhibition: beyond
music festival, beyond baroque, los angeles
observatory
was created for the second annual beyond music festival at beyond baroque
literary arts center in los angeles. the piece was created specifically
for a small dark 'archive' - a small room that acts as an archive for
the center's library of literary publications.
the piece was inspired
by a quote from joseph cornell's diary regarding the 5 things he always
saw from his kitchen window. he oftern referred to his kitchen as his
'observatory'. 5 tape loop compositions were composed; each using one
of cornell's 5 things seen. there were electronically transformed tape
loops from the sounds of birds, trees, sun (in this case the sounds of
the sun harnessed through a magnifying glass burning a contact mic), snow
(tv static) and rain.
each of the 5 loops was placed in a cassette player
that was concealed in a hollowed out book. each book had a speaker embedded
in its spine, so that the audio equipment was concealed and the sounds
seemed to quietly eminate from the books.
depending on the listener's
location in the room, each sound had a different prominence in the piece
- the listener's movements allowed for different sounds to be heard. the
archive room had no windows, so the audio acted as a kind of access to
another place.
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