Saturdays
May 10, 17, 24 & 31
2 - 8 pm
Free
Seth Cluett
doleros (audio tourism at ringing rocks)
.
In
rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, just west of the Delaware River, there
is a park with a rather peculiar feature.
The Ringing Rocks Park is a mile long boulder field containing the largest
Diabase (dolerite) deposit in North America. Diabase is the igneous rock
equivalent of volcanic basalt, has a high concentration of iron, and,
what's more, the rocks ring when you hit them. Families from all over
the country come to the park on weekends, sporting hammers and hunting
the field for rocks that ring like bells. As an audio-tourist landmark,
the Ringing Rocks park is quite special. Other sites of audio-tourism
usually fall into the category of attractions, specifically acoustic or
simply musically curious - the Echo Canyon in Utah, the Ear of Dionysus
Cave in Syracusa, Siciliy, or the "stalac-pipe" organ in the Luray Cavern,
Virginia. Ringing Rocks, however, is a site for sound-making activity,
a place for people to take joy in the exploration of the sonic qualities
of geologic detritus. Wandering among the boulders, visitors often seek
out 'the best' rocks, comparing the sound and quality of individual 'ringings'
and sharing their discoveries with one another.
Dolerite was the first name given to the formations before Diabase came
in to common usage. Dolerite is from doleros from the Greek meaning 'deceptive.'
The root of the Greek doleros is related to the adjectives 'wiley,' 'cunning,'
or 'clever.'
Seth
Cluett (born 1976, Troy, New York) is a composer and visual artist
whose work includes photography, drawing, video, sound installation, concert
music, performance, and theoretical writing. His pieces are an exploration
of the role of sound in everyday life. Operating at the boundary between
the auditory and the other senses, his work engages sound's unique property
to be at once both collectively shared and distinctly personal.
Many
of his pieces investigate the acoustic signature of specific geographies
where sound is experienced as an activity (audio tourism) or as a geologic
process. His work has been shown/performed at the 10th Rencontres Internationales
Paris/Berlin, Palais de Tokyo Museum, Thˇatre sur le Pavˇ, and GRM in
Paris; the ICA, Mobius Artist Space, MassArt/nonpod in Boston; WPS1/MoMA,
Issue Project Room, The Kitchen, Diapason, Engine 27, Tonic, and The Knitting
Factory in New York; the Betty Rymer Gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago,
Elastic Arts, Heaven, Artemisia, and Deadtech Galleries in Chicago; as
well as the Deep Listening Space in Kingston, NY amongst others. Seth's
work is documented on Errant Bodies Press, Sedimental, Crank Satori, BoxMedia,
and Wavelet Records. He has published articles for The Open Space Magazine,
Leonardo Music Journal, 306090, Earshot, and the Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America.
For more
information see http://www.onelonelypixel.org
.
