Installations

Earth Drums [2016]

An interactive experiment in archaic percussion and communication. Installed in Artpark’s Percussion Garden in Lewiston, NY.

As a percussion-obsessed high school freshman, I remember sitting in the school library reading the only book on percussion available, James Blades’ Percussion Instruments and Their History.  For some reason a paragraph on the origin of membrane drums stuck in my mind all these years.  Blades posited the notion that the earliest membrane drums were most likely animal skins staked and stretched over holes in the ground for drying purposes that were then accidentally discovered to be useful for sound making.

I thought it might also be fun to incorporate the practice of using drums as a means of communication as well.  This practice was particularly common along the Congo River in Africa where the high and low sounds of membrane drums would imitate the native tongues allowing drummers to send complex messages from village to village.

For this interactive exhibit, we’ve assembled two sets of drums – each with one low-pitched drum and one higher-pitched drum.  I invite you to communicate between the two sets of drums via Morse code.  For our purposes the low drum will be dashes while the high drum will be dots.  Please refer to the charts for explanations on how Morse code works and for assistance in sending a simple message – or just enjoy banging on a buried drum.

Glenn Kotche (2016)

Earth Drums [2013]

Installed for Solid Sound Festival 2013

Earth Drums An interactive experiment in archaic percussion and communication As a percussion-obsessed high school freshman, I remember sitting in the school library reading the only book on percussion available, James Blades’ Percussion Instruments and Their History. For some reason a paragraph on the origin of membrane drums stuck in my mind all these years. Blades posited the notion that the earliest membrane drums were most likely stretched animal skins staked over holes in the ground for drying purposes that were accidentally discovered to be useful for sound making.

Since the people at MASS MoCA are open-minded risk takers who enjoy a good challenge, I thought Solid Sound 2013 might provide a great opportunity to explore a modern day reenactment of these archaic instruments. I’m using actual drums in place of hides that are buried in the earth above resonating chambers.

I thought it might also be fun to incorporate the practice of using drums as a means of communication as well. This practice was particularly common along the Congo River in Africa where the high and low sounds of membrane drums would imitate the native tongues allowing drummers to send complex messages from village to village.

For this interactive exhibit, we’ve assembled two sets of drums – each with one low-pitched drum and one higher-pitched drum. I invite festivalgoers to communicate between the two sets of drums via Morse code. For our purposes dashes will equal the low drum and dots the high drum. Please refer to the charts for explanations on how the code works and for assistance in sending a simple message – or just enjoy banging on a buried drum. Please do not use the drums as a trampoline or table for drinks though!

Special thanks to Sonor and Promark for generously providing the drums and mallets, and to Dante Birch and Larry Smallwood for their assistance in design and construction.

Glenn Kotche, June 2013

Individual Trains [2011]

Music and film by Glenn Kotche with Pat Burns
Installed for Solid Sound Festival 2011

The formal structure of this piece is a stretched or expanded version of the first original drum beat that I came up with at age 15. I took each subdivision of the beat and stretched it several times in duration. Then each voice of its opposite rhythm was substituted with a more rhythmically complex texture. These textures come across as sheets of overlapping sound and are comprised of four elements including: a dense overlapping of all of the tracks from my drumkit installations record Next, that same Next “remix” in reverse, a half time version of my vibraphone piece MASK from my record Introducing and finally a track of pure electronic noise that I made from a chain of effects pedals and a mini-disc recorder. The placement of all of these elements adheres to the formal structure as dictated by that original drum beat. The rhythmically complex layers complement each other sonically and result in the feeling of concurrent individual events with a hidden connection.

The film is created from overlapping images or glimpses of my home town, Chicago. These diverse clips of the city either directly or impressionistically relate to each of the sonic elements of the accompanying track. They are superimposed with footage of water resting on speaker cones which are playing back each individual audio track, resulting in a physical representation of the music through the sonic reaction of the water.

Glenn Kotche, June 2011