Today at 10am I'll be chatting with video and sound artist Lou Watson on Bachelard's Panty Drawer. We'll be discussing her latest project Score for Traveling I-5 along with the dreaded commute, highways, suburbs and things on wheels that carry humans here, there and everywhere. I'll be playing songs by Bruce Springsteen, Harumi, US Girls, Toni Fisher, Public Enemy and many others, all in theme of "conveyance." Tune in online at freeformportland.org/listen or dial it up in Portland at 90.3 fm.
Below is one of Lou Watson's highway scores titled Section of I-705, on a Wednesday, for Electric Piano. For your listening and viewing pleasure.
Filmed from the roof Tacoma Art Museum and overlooking the I-705, Delin docks and waterway. The lanes of the roads become the lines on a musical staff. The bottom note (centered in the museum car park) is lower D, then the highway lanes produce F,A,C,E,G, and the overpass is high B and D. The notes are triggered as the cars pass the line produced by the central street light. The work is on view at Tacoma Art Museum, Washington, USA from May 14th to September 2016. Accompanying the piece is a graphic of the transposed score on traditional western staff. The graphic measures 18 inches x 20 feet (representing the 30 minutes of traffic being played).