Photos by Brent Joseph
Songs of Home | Songs of Change (2016)
Albert and Tina Small Center, Creative Alliance of New Orleans, Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans
Jebney Lewis, Rick Snow and Chris Staudinger, artists
Steel, electronics
Songs of Home | Songs of Change is a sonic map of the City of New Orleans, rendered in sniffed metal plates that are activated by piezo transducers. The artists worked with over 50 teens from area high schools, asking them to use their cell phones to make two field recordings- one that they can use to tell a story of what “home” means, and one that can serve as a prompt to write about how they see the city changing. The recordings are mapped to the sculpture by ward, and the collections of wards themselves emit resonant frequencies that become part of the piece’s overall sonic environment. The student writings are displayed as part of the sculpture, serving as a kind of textual score.
Above the city map floats a second map- one of the New Orleans freeway system, rendered in re-purposed brass instruments. This collection of tubes and bells is playable. The artists invited trombonist and composer, Jeff Albert, to create a new work using the frequencies, samples, and brass instruments, for the opening of the exhibition, Anarchitecture, at the Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans.