Sound Sculpture Exhibition :
1 & 8 October 2022 Saturday 2:30-4pm
2 & 9 October Sunday 2:30-6:30pm
Free Entry
Live Performances :
Session 1 – 30 September Friday 6-6:45pm | Session 2 – 30 September Friday 7-7:45pm
Session 3 – 1 October Saturday 4-4:45pm | Session 4 – 1 October Saturday 5:30-6:15pm
Session 5 – 7 October Friday 6-6:45pm | Session 6 – 7 October Friday 7-7:45pm
Session 7 – 8 October Saturday 4-4:45pm | Session 8 – 8 October Saturday 5:30-6:15pm
£5 | 8 places each session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for ticketing
The Venus Smiles sculpture at DIVFUSE will display a minor diminished 9 chord materialised in copper tubes which ring like church bells. In the evenings there will be musical performances on the instrument by the inventor Tabita Cargnel and other musicians coming from classical and experimental backgrounds. Also viewers with and without musical education, especially children, are very welcome to play and join the performances as verbally announced before each piece. The resonating copper tube system – a phenomenon called ‘tensegrity’ – can be played by using your hands, a bow, mallets or your voice. People can experience actively, but intuitively, how sound can make us feel and that regardless of their level of musical education they create immersive music that can initiate a somewhat non-judgemental but healing state of mind full of expression and flow.
The first sustainability focused Venus Smiles sculpture was opened to the public in 2021 with a musical premiere in Schwerte, Germany. Its sound is designed to transition from the newly built, sleek and harsh metal sound to a more warmly coated sound of rust and patina. Sound samples, improvisations and musical pieces played on the German Venus Smiles sculpture will be played through the speakers in the daytime of the exhibition days.
The artist Tabita Cargnel explores the connection between architecture and noise pollution in her latest project Venus Smiles, which was displayed at the Tate Britain Museum of London twice in 2019. Coming from the educational background of architecture, she recently completed her master’s in Design for Performance and Interaction at The Bartlett School of Architecture. Tabita worked on an array of projects, all of which straddle the lines between music, architecture, painting and technology. Such projects include Dance Between Strings (a mechanical instrumental structure that visitors can inhabit), as well as Mr Artist (a tiny robot that poops paint when you come too close) and various paintings. Venus Smiles is her most recent project, researching questions like “How can architecture make us feel well?” and “How can spatial structures be played and explored, how can we make them sing?”. Since 2020 Tabita lives in her hometown Cologne, where she currently works interdisciplinary projects including painting, sculptures, music and poetry.
www.tabitacargnel.com | www.youtube.com/channel/UCXVfvWwZ3-4F7J2X3_ooCWw
www.instagram.com/tabitacargnel_art/
www.instagram.com/singing_tensegrity/
Photo from Tabita Cargnel