Edgardo Rudnitzky

by Misa Jeffereis

Edgardo Rudnitzky, Octopus, 2008, sound object

Exhibition Catalogue Essay

Notations: The Cage Effect Today
February 17 – April 21, 2012

Edgardo Rudnitzky is a sound artist, composer, and percussionist, whose practice incorporates sound and visual art in theatrical settings, dance, and films. Rudnitzky’s works explore the nature of sound. To him, the visual presentation of his art is as important as its aural component. The artist explores the limits and potential of musical instruments, reinventing the functionality of a boat, record player, or clock using carefully constructed systems. The artist often incorporates the setting, whether a public space or a restrictive area, bringing new life to uncommon sites.

Octopus is a sound object in which Rudnitzky refashioned a turntable to incorporate four arms, each protruding from separate corners of the device. The artist created a composition for a string quartet, recorded each instrument separately, and made a vinyl disc with each track containing one short musical phrase from one instrument. In its presentation, the arms are motorized, automatically moving to their proper location (track) on the vinyl, and playing each phrase in sync with the other instruments (arms). The tracks are distributed on the record so as to create a choreography of movement when each arm slowly shifts positions. The combined motions of this hybrid creature is one of surprising gestural fluidity and musical splendor. Rudnitzky reconfigured a simple device that amplifies sonic vibrations into a functioning musical octopus.

In another of his works from 2008, Little Music, Rudnitzky and the artist and collaborator Jorge Macchi (whose works is also represented in this exhibition and catalogue) created an interactive musical piece in the Bayou Saint John for Prospect.1 New Orleans. The back of five paddleboats were rigged with a percussive African instrument called the kalimba, similar in theory to a music box. Teeth were affixed to the paddles, and with each rotation they strucke the metal keys on the kalimba, allowing the peddlers to create music. The combination of sounds from the five boats, although random, harmonized beautifully because of the pentatonic scale. Here is another instance in which Rudnitzky, like his predecessor John Cage and his prepared pianos, has reconfigured an object to function quite differently from its original role—and to produce a quite different sound—A Hidden Noice (as Duchamp would have it).