Monday, May 3, 2010




While a lot of the pieces at the Whitney Biennial stood out to me, none caught my attention as much as Ari Marcopoulos's DVD video project titled "Detroit." The movie showed kids playing a continuous sound they could manipulate via a very impressive arrangement of guitar pedals and stomp boxes. As a guitar player myself, I was instantly draw towards the familiar sounds of some of the crazy effect pedals before I even saw what the video was. I really loved that the sound never stopped. Even when they weren't touching the pedals, the sound wave was always present in the work. Just as the sound started to settle into something closer to a normal guitar, the kids would press another pedal creating a whole new sound. This random experimentation with the different effects creates a very interesting piece. I sure if they were to try this again the piece would remain somewhat similar, but it would take on a whole new sound in the end. I think it would be cool to have someone who's established in terms of using these guitar effects featured in the piece to see what they could create without normal music boundaries. The name that first comes to mind for me has to be Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. He pushes his guitar playing to extreme sounds with his effects and styles, and would really give a piece like this unimaginable impact. Another cool thing would be if us as viewers were able to play with the pedals to create the piece. The sound would be continued and changing every day.