Art student turned pop musician turned sound artist David Byrne takes the idea of flooring the pedal literally with an upcoming installation:
One thing Byrne is still sorting out: dealing with guests who wear heels.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.
