BEQUEATH integrates sound, poetry, and sculpture. Embedded within the sculpture is a 5.30 minute audio track of human, amphibian, avian, and tellurian voices. The track is motion activated, the viewer's presence initiating a cross time-place-species conversation.
Included in the track is my speaking of a poem by Gregory Orr This is what was bequeathed us (from How Beautiful the Beloved, Copper Canyon Press 2009); the songs of two recently extinct birds; and the sounds of water and thunder.
The suspended form was originally a Techniklavier - a soundless practice piano that had belonged to my father, a pianist.
Thank you to Gregory Orr for writing this poem and for his blessing in letting me borrow it; to the Macaulay Library of Ornithology for permission to use their recordings of Bachman's warbler and the Kauai O'o; to the waters, weather, and vernal ponds where I live. And to the New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist regrant administered through Arts Mid Hudson for supporting the creation of this work.
View the 5:27 minute version here. This is the full length audio track accompanied with images.
