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Circus of sound

A whimsical exhibit strikes a chord with the whole family
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
April 4th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
The music museum looks more like a mad scientist's laboratory these days, with an accompanying cacophony.
“Orbis Pictus, or The Gate to the World of Man’s Creative Imagination,” curated by Petr Nikl, is a remarkable exhibition of oddball instruments and installations that is currently turning the Czech Museum of Music into a wonderland of sound — created by the visitors themselves. It is especially appealing to kids, who tend to get short shrift in this city of 100 museums.
Upon entering the lobby, visitors are immediately thrust into a circus atmosphere, with unusual sounds emanating from bizarre instruments and sculptures being percussed. All of this to the sounds of laughing children and the general sense of “wow” permeating the space.
Orbis Pictus

at Czech Museum of Music
Ends April 30. Karmelitská 2, Prague 1–Malá Strana.
Open Wed.–Mon. 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

The main inspiration for this project was “Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart,” by the educator Jan Amos Komenský (1592–1670), known internationally as Comenius. In addition to installations by Nikl, the show also includes pieces by 12 other Czech artists. It premiered at the Czech Center in Paris last year, and will go on the road again after its run in Prague.
At the entrance, Ondřej Smeykal, a noted Czech didgeridoo player, has planted a black tower with brass horns sticking out like tree branches. You can blow into the horns or into holes on the cylinder, creating sounds that can be heard through holes on the other end. Smeykal has another piece at the back of the space, Rattling Tube. This one is an elongated sculpture that looks like a flute laid on its side, with brass horns at both ends and loose sand inside that rattles when you roll it.
The centerpiece of “Orbis Pictus” is a set of installations in the main room. Eye by Nikl and Petr Lorenc is a huge, inflatable black orb that visitors can sit inside and rotate by turning a hand-wheel. It functions as a camera obscura, with a large white screen that projects the shadow of a floppy, jellyfishlike construction hanging down from the dome of the building, a former church.
Behind Eye, a white inflatable igloo houses Nikl’s wonderful collection of objects, such as starfish, seahorses, colorful feathers and animal jaws floating on rafts of cork. There are also twirling crystal balls and light globes with various curios inside. Unusual instruments add the soundtrack to this magical place, with a hurdy-gurdy for visitors to try out.
Placed all around these installation are other acoustic sculptures, such as Milan Cais’ Kalimba 1 and Kalimba 2, functional instruments constructed of fine wood and shaped like objects one might find in outer space. And they make a good racket when you play them.
Martin Janíček’s Sound Wall is just that: a wooden wall with listening stations and sources for making sounds on both sides. There are also funnels functioning as mouthpieces connected to tubes going through the wall, one side for speaking and one for listening.
Another contribution by Nikl is Citera, a wooden wall with a playing side and a listening side that yields the most intense sounds of all — if the other end is doing it right.
A more elaborate example of this mode of communication is Ear by Smeykal, a wooden tent with a tangle of long tubes hanging inside. These same tubes rise up through the top, like Medusa’s hair, to the other floors of the three-story building. Visitors above and below can speak to each other through the tubes (if you can manage to find a common line in the winding labyrinth).
Petr Lorenc, who died tragically in a car accident last year, has two of the best works in the show: Maze of Light is essentially an elongated kaleidoscope that you can look through at both ends, and his Fountain of Kisses, placed in a separate darkened room, is a curious low-tech construction with fantastic results. Visitors can turn a knob to change the position of a faucet in a fountain, moving it to drip water onto different plates or in cups for varied visual and sound effects. The soothing rhythm of the water is hard to appreciate because of the hubbub in neighboring rooms, though the shadow play on the wall is still striking.
Sound art by contemporary artists tends to be noisy and sometimes even a painful affair, but “Orbis Pictus” generally bucks this trend. It is too bad that such a special exhibit is not a permanent fixture in Prague. But it should amaze and amuse audiences in Brno (May 11–June 17), Kroměříž (June 21–Aug. 26), Opava (Sept. 4–30) and beyond.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (4/04/2007):

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