Sound Sense exhibition

I thought I'd say a little more about the current Sound Sense exhibition at the Whitechapel art gallery in London. Which is on until the 1st of Feb 2020.

Even though this exhibition is in a small gallery there is a lot here about the sixties Fluxus artists involved in music and sound. Fluxus art is well represented in London at the moment with the Tate Modern showing the work of Nam June Paik. I'm a bit ambivalent about the Fluxus performances where pianos are ripped to pieces but I'm very inspired by the musical instruments they created and was fascinated to learn about the music machines of Joe Jones. A machine on show is a glockenspiel which is played automatically by a small electric motor.

Music Kit Xylophone

You can read more about this instrument here.

 https://www.fondazionebonotto.org/it/collection/fluxus/jonesjoe/1023.html

In this work he  shares how to make the instrument. So predates blogs and youtube instructional videos.

You can listen to his music here.

http://www.ubu.com/sound/jones.html

Joe also performs his automated music machines on Yoko Ono's  Fly album. Which is remarkable.

 He's plays on the tracks "Airmale", "Don't Count the Waves" and "You"

You can see his machines on the inside of the gate fold sleeve. This shows a variety of musical instruments hanging from frames and the small electric motors which spin effects to 'play' the strings or hit the percussion.

I was able to get a book which accompanied  a 1990's exhibition of his machines in Germany, this shows a considerable body of work. The dull cover in no way reflects the vast number of photos and drawings in the book.

His music machines are often a playful pun on an idea, such as the instruments in cages being a homage to John Cage and as I've described before often contain an actual musical instrument 'played' by a small electric motor, all within a sculptural framework.

This 'playing' by the small electric motor is automatic, sometimes activated by solar power and a degree of randomness is created by the swing of the motor caused by the striking on the instruments playing surface or strings.