FLEA Ensemble
The Wolfsonian-FIU Museum, Miami
SUBTROPICS XXI, the latest edition of the Experimental Biennial of Music and Sound Art, which has been organized since its inception by the sound artist Gustavo Matamoros, took place in Miami from March 3 - 19. As part of the event’s program, on March 4 the FLEA Ensemble (FIU Laptop & Electronic Arts) presented at The Wolfsonian-FIU Museum a performance, conducted by Paula Matthusen, of Rainforest IV, a sound instal- lation/performance which is currently considered a seminal work in its field.
Rainforest IV was originally developed by David Tudor (1926- 1996) in 1973, as part of the evolution of a workshop that explored the sounds produced by the vibration of constructed objects, each of which was connected to an electric generator. Tudor’s students were the then young
artists John Driscoll, Phil Edelstein, Linda Fisher, Ralph Jones, Martin Kalve and Bill Viola, who produced the sculptures that contributed to define the experimental nature of that installation/performance.
As part of a preparatory workshop for their performance of Rainforest IV, the members of FLEA visited The Wolfsonian-FIU Museum collection with the aim of selecting, on an individual basis, an object that might satisfy their particular interest in the pro- duction of a specific sound. Then they looked for “analogs” of these collection items outside the museum and converted them into instruments. For their installation, these objects were suspended throughout the exhibition space with a microphone affixed to them, so that they might pick up resonant qualities and ‘color’ the sound pro- duced digitally by means of computers, which was also broad- casted directly through other microphones in the room where both sounds finally mixed. Each artist-performer developing in an independent way his/her own strategy for the production of sound in accordance with the natural cycle explored in the proposal thus became connected with a particular object. As in the case of its original predecessor, the installation/performance required mainly the spectator’s physical displacement and the activation of the senses of sight and hearing, as well as the activation of his/her corporal or “proxemic” codes.
Inscribed within the contemporary tendency to reproduce historical performances, this recreation of Rainforest IV successfully met the aspiration present in the genesis of the original one: that sound unfold through space in such a way that the spectator might be completely wrapped in it and participate actively in the process of artistic configuration.
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Flea Ensemble. Rainforest IV, by/por David Tudor. The Wolfsonian Museum, March 4 2011 Photography/Fotografía: Luis Olazábal
