Seven jointly conceived sound installations by the two Dutch artists, in which machine noise and contemplative silence mix. The installations have an instrumental character, however, when strings run through the room and across the Weser River, from which microphones pick up sounds and noises and feed them to amplifiers, until at the end rhythmically structured sequences of sounds or listening sequences exposed to the randomness of wind and weather sound out of loudspeakers. In the area of their controlled objects, Panhuysen and Goedhart add a mathematically calculated score to the abstract experience and instrument it very precisely. In their installation “Waldeslust”, they even manage to make the strings “listen” to each other and fall into silence when the neighbouring string makes itself heard at excessive volume. “Wachet auf! Wachet auf! Es kräht schon der Hahn” is what they call an arrangement of various alarm clocks, whose eavesdropping wheels create a cacophony of time passing by. A “Balkan Orchestrion” plays almost ghostly. The strings of a battery of guitars are struck by a mechanically driven jump rope, and right behind it hangs “Oh Susanna” on the wall. Also a stringed instrument that emits a tone sequence.
Publication
Paul Panhuysen / Johan Goedhart. Klanginstallationen (exh. cat., ed. GAK, 1986)