Machines at Play works

By Nick Laugher, Staff Contributor

Headphones dangle daintily from the ceiling. Chisels and files delicately scrape across wire while a shimmering piano hauntingly rambles a jarring jumble of melodies: this is the world of Jean-Pierre Gauthier. Gauthier’s exhibit at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, entitled “Machines at Play”, is one of the most conceptually stunning and ground-breaking that the gallery has seen in decades.
A Sobey Art Award winner from Montreal, Gauthier has exhibited work heavily and extensively throughout North America and Europe. He is adept at the construction and engineering of complex machinery and is a talented musician – skills that enhance his prodigious art making. Many of Gauthier’s pieces depend on found objects that are heavily manipulated and combined in radical ways to produce sounds, and events that are unpredictable but exude a disturbing sense of intention.
Machines at Play is concerned with engaging the public with the pure essence of sound. Kinetic motion, the fluidity and absurd randomness of noise and its convoluted synergy with time are all buried deep within Gauthier’s vision. Spanning the most influential 10 years of his artistic voyage, the exhibition is a survey of the most prolific and inspiring works of Gauthier’s career.
The over-arching statement of the show is how essential motion and interaction are in the sonic world and thus how immensely chaotic and unpredictable the art of sound truly is. Most of the exhibits hover around the principle of kinetic interaction, expressing the necessity of motion and energy in the world of music.
“Marqueurs d’Incertitude” (Uncertainty Markers) are among the most revolutionary and interesting pieces in the exhibit. They consist of a wire-frame entity on a wall, attached to motors and gripping charcoal sticks in its tiny wire hands. The sound and range of motion of the visitors shuffling around and gawking at the piece is interpreted by the wire entity and reiterated in awkward, jerky movements on the wall. Relaying movements from the gracefully intrigued observer to the stiff, nervous nature of first-time gallery patron, it sketches eerily apt triangle effigies.
The piece “Battements et Papillons” (Beats and Butterflies), however, is the true embodiment of Gauthier. Attached to an electrical box of micro-controllers that is stimulated by movement is a beautiful 19th-century piano, found by the artist and redone in cracked and frayed metallic foil. Gauthier’s inspiration for the aesthetic of this piece stems from his fascination with the random and chaotic patterns of sidewalk cracks. The sensors attached to the piano interpret the direction and aggression of the observer’s movement, which the piano then communicates.
The musical interpretation of the observer’s movements creates a progression of “controlled randomness” according to Gauthier. The resulting cascade of sound is surprisingly melodic. As an onlooker it is a frighteningly poignant representation of thoughts and feelings. It seems much too natural and descriptive to be random. Your heartstrings are tugged and plucked either with or by the piano. It’s enough to make even the most cynical art-goer stand back in awe and inspiration.
Perhaps the most bizarre and surreal piece of the exhibit, “Le Cagibi” (based on his piece in 2000 entitled “The Big Cleanup”) is a painstakingly crafted, intricately detailed replica of a janitor’s closet. On first glance, the piece seems ludicrously out of place in the realm of Gauthier’s work. A grimy sink, rusty lockers and grungy paper towel litter the room. As the minutes tick away inside the room, you slowly realize how meticulously planned and designed it is. Motors tug just hard enough on metal doors to craft a delicate squeaking, the sink slowly gurgles pops as bubbles rise. There are calendars and postcards and Stephen Hawking novels littering the walls and lockers.
Gauthier has, down to the last detail, produced a stunningly accurate soundscape of the mundane. The more time you spend scanning the walls and imbibing the sounds of scraping wood and creaking metal, the deeper you are lost in the trance of the room. It truly feels as if you have stepped out of the gallery and into a closet tucked away in the back of a schoolhouse.
While Gauthier’s exhibits differ radically, they all possess the same central essence: the dissection and investigation of our relationship with sound. Gauthier is a modern poet unconcerned with the fleeting notions of words. He takes our preconceived notions of sound as a static waveform and he begins to deconstruct and manipulate it in ways that render us speechless. This exhibit investigates our synergistic relationship with sound and perception not only by integrating onlookers into the exhibit but basing the entirety of the exhibit around them. From the janitor’s closet to motorized horns, Gauthier allows us to crawl inside the belly of the beast and experience sound in stark, alien ways that truly illuminate his talent as a conceptual and technical mastermind. Gauthier is fully in his element.