Water doesn’t behave the same way twice. It absorbs sound, distorts it, carries it, and sometimes erases it altogether. That instability is where artist Tarek Atoui works. We’ve seen it in Bjork’s live concerts and now Atoui is bringing his installation to the Tate.

This October, Atoui will create the next annual Hyundai Commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, one of the most demanding spaces in contemporary art. Rather than filling it with volume or spectacle, Atoui is likely to do something quieter — letting sound move through materials. (Our feature and review on In The Dark bears some likeness to this upcoming event.)

Born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1980 and now living in Paris, Atoui has spent years building instruments that don’t sit comfortably in concert halls. Many of them involve water, glass, and ceramics — materials that react to sound instead of simply producing it. Water ripples, bowls hum, glass vibrates at the edge of breaking. Sound becomes something you encounter physically, not something delivered from a stage.

Much of Atoui’s work takes place in low light or near darkness. When the room dims, listening changes. You stop scanning for meaning and start paying attention to sensation: vibration in the floor, resonance in a vessel, a faint shift in air pressure. Sound moves slowly, negotiated through touch, breath, and mechanical movement.

Water, glass, and ceramics aren’t supporting actors here. They carry the whole piece.

Atoui’s instruments are often activated by visitors rather than performers. A hand turns a surface. Breath enters a pipe. A motor stirs liquid in a shallow bowl. Sound emerges unevenly, depending on how gently or insistently the materials are engaged. Nothing is fixed.

This approach is evident in works like Waters’ Witness, shown at Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria and later at Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in Milan, where sound passed through water-filled vessels and ceramic forms. The experience was less about listening to a composition and more about becoming aware of how sound behaves in matter — how it pools, disperses, and leaves residue. Of course the easiest way to access this kind of natural “art” is just to sit by a lonely brook and listen to Mother Nature herself, without the pomposity.

The Turbine Hall itself is an acoustic body: vast, industrial, difficult to control. Rather than overpowering it, Atoui’s practice suggests a tuning of the space — allowing sound to circulate, settle, and respond to the architecture’s own history as a former power station.

At a time when sound is usually amplified, compressed, and consumed instantly, Atoui’s work insists on slowness. It asks visitors to stay with uncertainty, to notice small changes, to listen with their hands and feet as much as their ears.

There are no instructions. No single vantage point. Just materials doing what they do best when left room to act.

The post Listening to Water: Tarek Atoui’s Next Work for Tate Modern appeared first on Green Prophet.

Using rifles, pistols, and shotguns seized from drug cartels by the Mexican army, the team built devices that are computer-controlled.  Each can be programmed to play music individually or as a larger ensemble.

Jumping off from a prior project where he turned 1,000 guns into shovels, Reyes re-purposes these lethal artifacts into media for making beautiful sound.

(RELATED: Libyan artist turns weapons into art)

It’s a more political version of RhythManiA’s use of upcycled drums and the teenage band The Garbage-Men whose entire ensemble is sourced from trash. 

He demonstrates that, as with money and power, technology is neither good nor bad. It all depends on how it’s used.

Photographs of the re-purposed objects are circulating the world’s museums in an exhibition titled Disarm, which debuted at London’s Lisson Gallery earlier this year.  Several of the Disarm instruments are currently on display at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art.

Learn more about how Reyes “transforms negative instincts into creative instincts” in the documentary clip below. It’s well worth a watch to see (and hear) the instruments in use.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/YwQp16D-TqQ[/youtube]

Images from Colossal

The post Pedro Reyes’ Disarm Morphs Weapons Into A Mechanized Orchestra appeared first on Green Prophet.