|
|
-
-
-
- Los Angeles Times
- February 1, 2007 Thursday
Home Edition
- One good turntable deserves another
- Shana Ting Lipton, Special to the
Times
- SECTION: CALENDAR WEEKEND; Calendar
Desk; Part E; Pg. 17
-
-
Sean Duffy's experiential art exhibition "The Grove"
is an open invitation to anyone who ever wanted to hijack a DJ's
turntables. In the interactive sound installation, currently
up at Cal State L.A.'s Luckman Fine Arts Complex, the spectator
contributes to the art as he or she plays DJ with 20 turntables
and dozens of vinyl albums.
- The large exhibit space is filled
with record players and crates of albums -- as varied as Keith
Jarrett and Franz Schubert. Each turntable setup is connected
by tentacle-like wires to more than 400 tiny, colorful hand-painted
speakers suspended in midair.
As the gallery space fills up with would-be DJs, the aural maze
evolves into a frantic cacophony of speeches by President John
F. Kennedy, folk tunes by Gordon Lightfoot, Cuban drum tracks
and so on. "The more people that are in the room participating,
the more frenetic, even verging on psychotic, the piece gets,"
says Julie Joyce, Luckman's gallery director. "It's a canopy
of sound."
A record collector and former DJ at the UC Santa Barbara college
radio station, Duffy enjoys the pops and hisses and endures the
participants' occasional scratching of the discs, which come
from his personal collection. "The flaws are really important
to me," he says.
So is the work's nostalgic undercurrent, which reflects the "accidental
bleed" of "talk radio, rock and Mexican radio"
emanating from cars with their windows rolled down, as well as
the potpourri of sounds wafting through public parks. The latter
will be re-created Wednesday when Duffy hosts a bring-a-sack-lunch
"picnic tour" of "The Grove."
-- Shana Ting Lipton
|
