By Ken Sakamoto, Star-Bulletin
Nicole Seu works on metal leaves to be part of a sculpture
METAL MUSIC:Artists give the term new meaning
By Nadine Kam
Assistant Features EditorIf a rock falls in a bamboo forest and everyone hears it, would it be music? You bet, according to local sound artist Steven Rosenthal. What's more, he says musicians are given way too much credit for what they do. Says Rosenthal, music is "all in the listening."
He'll get a chance to prove his theory tomorrow when he, University of Hawaii art lecturer Frank Sheriff and his class of Metal Fabrication students stage "Metal Music," an interactive musical installation in the Art Building Bamboo Courtyard.
Musical sculptures will reverberate from the earth, clang from the trees, and chime with a wisp of bamboo stalk swaying with the wind.
All of it is music to Rosenthal's ears. "Everything's equal to me," he said, as he compared the sound of a bamboo forest with the beauty of a fog horn belch in Honolulu Harbor.
"I had a classical music education, but I've always been fascinated with sound. I felt there was a meaning in sound itself."
Most of us tend to recognize music in terms of artists who are or are not capable of making a CD worth listening to. Some would say Nirvana made music, while Whitney Houston never has and never will. Or vice versa.
Rosenthal said that rather than credit the artist, it is our brains' interpretation of neural impulses zipping from eardrum to inner ear that "ascribe meaning to sounds, collate them and put them together.
"You're the one making the music in your mind. You're the one who gives it meaning."
What has turned into a lesson in music appreciation began as a welding class for art students. "I was inspired by the glass students' multi-media project," Sheriff said. "It brought the students together to work collaboratively like this, and doing a performance, which is also new to a lot of students."
He's been helping them get into the mood by dragging a large, steel kettle into the welding studio and building bonfires in it before work starts - dancing and shirt-waving optional. After all, what's a "metal" concert without some pyrotechnics?
"Metal sculpture deals with fire because we're working with torches," Sheriff said. "So I'm even thinking about integrating aspects of the process into the finished work.
"I also wanted the students to think about the site and how the pieces would interact with the bamboo in the area, from the way it's growing, to surrounding things like the birds, so that the finished work would integrate all sounds."
Bamboo was one of the first materials Rosenthal - whose sculptures are inspired by sound - ever used. "In the very beginning, I was a child playing the oboe," he said. "It's the fate of oboe players that we have to learn to shave and shape our own reeds to make them work. It's all a matter of proportion. It was a big part of my education."
Rosenthal's appreciation of bamboo grew with his knowledge of music. "Its hollow interior is a pristine universe of emptiness and silence, but its character comes out in its voice," he said. "There is a warmth there that is incredibly strong and flexible at the same time. It has depth of character and potential."
The art students have absorbed their lessons well. Using old hotel keys that were about to be thrown out, Cindy Jacks has created a metallic curtain suspended from copper pipe, which lets out shimmering, sparkly ripples. "The wind blowing through the bamboo makes that sound, too," she said.
It's quite different from the haphazard clatter of keys jangling in a jeans pocket.
Nicole Seu and Carla Lemon-Wilcoxen are collaborating on steel sculptures of leaves over which they will suspend blocks of ice with rocks frozen in them. Music will be made by falling rocks released by the melting ice.
"It's a very Zen piece," Lemon-Wilcoxen said.
"It will be nature playing the music instead of man," Seu said. "But I guess people can throw rocks if they want to."
"Frank wasn't so sure about our sound in the beginning," Lemon-Wilcoxen said, "but it's beginning to shape up."
Seu, a photography major, said she wanted to work with metals because "it's nice to get dirty and make art out of what they use to make buildings. It's taken the intimidation out of seeing big guys welding in the street. Now when I see them I think, 'I could do that ... if I chose to.' "
Lemon-Wilcoxen chose to work with steel and the labor-intensive task of heating, then forging pieces on an anvil. It's aggressive work, and in the process of pounding the pieces, Seu said, "I just thought I need to be working out more."
The results could easily be heard when Lemon-Wilcoxen took a small mallet to a steel leaf, which let out a sonorous peal as distinguished as a church bell's. A copper leaf, in comparison, yielded only a flat hollow-sounding smack, the sound of a beer can being kicked down the street.
Those who visit the exhibit will be able to hear and feel the differences firsthand. It was a goal of Sheriff's and Rosenthal's to make the work interactive. Mallets and drum sticks will be available.
"I want people to feel comfortable in wanting to come up and hit it," Sheriff said.
"We're putting participants in the driver's seat," Rosenthal said. "They get to be the artists, the musicians. Instead of having an artist describe reality to them, this leaves it open as a process. It reinforces community values of participation and cooperation."
For Rosenthal, audience participation is vital if the exhibition is to have life beyond a single event. As part of a New Genre movement in art that encompasses experimental, multimedia, conceptual, performance and interactive art, he said the work does not lend itself to display. So it is important for artists like him to demonstrate the value of their work for a society that increasingly tends to value information and absolutes, not abstracts.
Yet, Rosenthal feels confident that art in the 21st century will continue to provide a nonconfrontational way for people to work out issues and problems.
"The sovereignty issue is fed a lot by music and dance. People are able to work out ideas in a way that is not so critical or dangerous, and that's why art is so important. In America, we forget that art is not always commercially oriented. In most other cultures, they recognize something more vital in art, in renewing the sense of who we are."
Metal works
What: Interactive musical installation by UH Metal Fabrication 356 students
