2004
80 audio speakers
80 hand cut bottles
audio composition
electronics
installation at the
sculpture center
long island city, ny
fulgurites was created for the exhibition “treble” at the sculpture center in long island city, ny. the piece was created specifically for a 4 foot by 90 foot space in the basement of the museum. the work was named after the phenomenon when natural glass is created through a combination of lightning striking sand… leading me to consider glass a kind of poetic residue of a moment truly captured in physical form, or frozen in time.
the source for the installation were the last few notes i was able to record while my grandfather’s violin before it disappeared – and thus, the recordings existed as a similar poetic residue, as if an audio recording could also be considered the residue of several moments – this time captured as audio rather than glass…
the installation consisted of 80 small audio speakers, each situated inside of the center core of a bottle whose top and bottom had been cut away by hand. the crude glass tubes acted not only as metaphors for the fulgurite object, as well as a functioning as acoustic amplifiers for the speakers and sound (like a megaphone).