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Leif Brush 1964-1969: snowflakes seeing the wind soundsculpture cortextual memory resources smile measuring device

 

Construction/collage/photograph // ATS satellite views of Paw Paw site--Telecopier facsimilie imaging

 

 

site at OXBOW, Saugatuck, Michigan

Contextual view from the Oxbow Inn's WIDOW'S LOOKOUT looking west toward the Buckminster Fuller Geodesic half-Dome. (Up to the 1900s boats could be seen on the distant lagoon from this vantage.)

Beneath the dome with Seton Coggeshall, I was discussing my plans to broadcast reflected sound from a tape recorder. This was to be placed with its speaker pointed upward some distance above the dirt floor and near the focal point of parabola. With a second recorder I taped from nearby and distant positions. The recordings were a full variety of voice and sounds which spilled and meandered out from under the edge. Much of the sound became embedded in the dry dirt below and from the farthest distance only the higher frequencies could be heard sounding sparsely and intermittently bird-like and metalic.

 

NATURAL PLAYING: GRAVEL, ROADSIDE GRASSES, TREES AND SHRUBS

1200 feet of pulverized dirt and gravel road and floral boundaries with bushes and grasses, monitored in mid-July as a concert for FM radio broadcast

Sound recording, South Haven, Michigan, with the assistance of Seton Coggeshall..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suspended kinetic sound sculpture

Detail of mirror and ruler for smile measuring .

(Sonderkommando des Spiegels und des Tabellierprogramms für das Lächelnmessen.)

Smiles could be lit, a scratch pad could be used for metric conversions, the fan could be activated to blow away a steamy mirror, and toilet paper was available for whatever the fan couldn't erase. The fidget switches and devices triggered the sounds from a runaway radio dial. Theater lights ringed the construction. The O housing the mirror was a red letter O that had fallen from the Chicago Theatre on State Street. I picked it up while waiting for my westbound CTA bus after leaving night school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1987 AP Photograph from Science News

Concept: hearing and seeing your smile

Your head would be held rigid momentarily as three strain gauges (arrows) are attached to the chin and both lips. Muscle movements produce analog voltages which are commensurate with any of your facial movements and the results include a sounding smile and resulant sonifications. Most people can sense a smile permeating the body onthrough to its joyous moment when lips separate and your mouth widens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BRUSH BOX telephone ( sound sculpture construction series)

(Arbeitendes analoges Telefon DES BÜRSTE KASTEN-Telefons (stichhaltige Skulptur)

Working analog telephone used a former wooden paint box.

Adieu painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Environmental sounding sculpture

Sculpture courtyard south of SAIC building

A brown-painted plastic curtain "door" separated me and the performer who created a recycled sound convusion from filling, dumping and refilling the aluminum and tin, keg-lined cans. I randomly matched previously recorded sounds of the tin cans bouncing on an interior (echo-laden) concrete floor. Using the reel-to-reel recorder, I could fast forward and/or rewind to remembered sections on the Wollensak, reel-to-reel 1/4" tape recorder (over my head).

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