05.02.2008: Pedal Walk With Me

I’m currently working on a piece for a benefit supporting the local arts organization, The Kitchen. The event, scheduled for May 21st at the Puck Building, will honor artist and DJ Christian Marclay. I like much of Marclay’s work, so my piece is sort of a tribute to him — or at least it’s fairly inspired by his work. My piece will be comprised of a kind of carpet of one hundred guitar pedals, which benefit attendees must walk on in order to enter the main dining and performance space. A guitar will be plugged into and run through all the pedals, and then into an amp. We’ve tested a portion of it to see if there are any unexpected problems and I was surprised to discover how well it works. Of course, the sounds are fairly random, and stepping on one or two of the distortion or fuzz pedals raises the screaming noise level pretty high, but that will be adjusted. Happily, some pedals will loop whatever is going on at the time of their activation, and so there will be constant sound changing all the time. Here is a picture of it partially finished in my studio:

The organizers pragmatically pointed out that there could be issues for attendees in heels, as did CS. I had hoped to make participation in the installation mandatory, something each guest would have to experience in order to move from cocktails to the next part of the event. But women’s heels will be my Achilles heel, uh, duh…It’ll still be OK. We’ll just have to leave a narrow passageway or alternate route for the heeled ladies, or place the thing in a less obtrusive location.