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Walking into the gallery upstairs at the Nelson Fine Arts
Center that houses Sean Duffy's "The Grove," we
came upon a group of young school children about three feet
high. As they ran through the gallery (yes, ran), their screams
added to the cacophony created by a dozen-plus turntables
playing different records at the same time, layers of sound
that felt more like a big city intersection than a museum
room. and certainly not like any sort of musical instrument.
Being as young as they were, the children didn't quite recognize
the turntables for anything but a DJ's tool, and several attempted
to remedy the strange lapse of control by grabbing the tone
arms and scratching hip hop style.
Spread throughout the room on separate
wood tables are simple turntables, with a bin of old records
nearby each on the floor. The records are of a marvelous disparate
sort- jazz, blues and classical Chinese discs joined by Broadway
and Flamenco, not a few movie soundtracks and at least one
Caedmon recording of poetry in Dylan Thomas's breathless baritone.
The visitor is encouraged to pick out a record or ten, and
set the wheels turning. Each turntable leads to speakers hung
over the room making it impossible to guess the sources without
looking at the spinning labels. The speakers, along with everything
else in the room, are constructed from various purchases from
Ikea, and overhang the record players with lengths of cable
that construct a sort of tree trunk- hence "The Grove."
I admit to being as confused as the
children at first. This is an interactive piece that is as
far from computer games as possible, in fact, there are no
discernable rules. Because of the impossibility of getting
all the record players running at the same time without some
ending their track and going silent (unless a group of eighteen
"players" were matched with the eighteen turntables),
the visitor is left to simply enjoy the mayhem. As John Spiak,
ASU Art Museum Curator and one of the organizers of the exhibit
explains, despite the anachronous use of turntables, this
is not hip-hop, but has a lot to do with the conditions in
Los Angeles that made West Coast hip- hop what it is: the
sounds of a car-filled urban space, with music pouring out
of houses and store fronts mixing with shouting across intersections
in the afternoon. Perhaps not something all that familiar
to people in the Valley. Plans for the future of the exhibit
include turning it over to a group of DJ's to see what they
make of it. In the mean time the exhibit will keep the ASU
Museum guards fit, as they have the stated obligation to keep
at least two turntables playing at all times. Remember, this
is at the top of the stairs.
- This article also appeared in JAVA, July-August, '07
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