Ice Follies 2014

Gordan Monahan, Frozen Piano on Lake Nipissing, 2014

For the Tenth Anniversary of Ice Follies, Near North Mobile Media Lab (N2M2L) was pleased to present, in association with Nipissing University’s Department of Fine and Performing Arts, the 2013 laureate (Visual and Media Arts) of the Governor General’s Awards. Monahan’s on-ice installation was the latest in a series of installations that he has completed across Europe, America, and Asia.

His process involves the removal of the back panel of a donated piano and the attachment of 70-metre piano wires to the soundboard inside. Monahan then stretches these wires high up in the air and across to the shore. In previous cases, Monahan has attached the wires to tall buildings. For Ice Follies 2014, he will run stretch six long piano wires 70 meters across the frozen lake where he will then anchor the wires at the far end to the roof of a camper-trailer.

An amplifier inside the trailer will then send audio signals through motors into the wires, travelling along the wires and are heard coming out of the piano. The audio recordings are re-composed pieces of Frederic Chopin and Henry Cowell.

After the installation is complete, he will leave a sound-generating device that provides an ethereal and aeolian sound experience, sometimes drown out the audio signals, or otherwise blending with them when the wind blows across the wires. The whole installation is located approximately 200 meters offshore on the frozen lake.

Fellow Ice Follies 2014 artist, David Merleau assisted Monahan with setting up his installation. David Merleau also created an audio documentary allowing folks to listen to the story of the remarkable sound of Gordon Monahan’s “A Piano Listening to Itself, which you can listen to HERE

Artist Bio:

Gordon Monahan’s works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art. As a composer and sound artist, he juxtaposes the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustical phenomena with elements of media technology, environment, architecture, popular culture, and live performance.

Beginning in the late 1970’s, he created sound works using elements of natural forces and the environment, eventually constructing long string installations activated by wind (Long Aeolian Piano, 1984-88), by water vortices (Aquaeolian Whirlpool, 1990) and by indoor air draughts (Spontaneously Harmonious in Certain Kinds of Weather, 1996).

Of his work, Monahan has said, “My interest in sound originates from music because my artistic training is in traditional, classical music and pop music. In the last few years I’ve come across an interesting technical phenomenon, and that is to make motors vibrate with audio signals. The motor actually replaces the loud speaker. And I do this by sending audio signals into a large 500-watt amplifier, attaching a small electric motor to the speaker terminals at the amplifier. I’ve hung these electric motors on these long piano strings and that induces the audio signals to vibrate these long wires and you hear the audio signals coming out of the piano.”