Ffffff (2007)
Flapping flea-flickered for floor flute
Miniature 5.1 fixed-media sound installation
Created for Robert Chambers’s sculpture Floor Flute (2003)
Duration: 8′54″
Commissioned by CIFO for Fortunate Objects
December 5, 2007–February 17, 2008
CIFO, Miami
CIFO collection: Robert Chambers’s Floor Flute with Ffffff installed within it
Featured image: Ralph Provisero’s interpretation of Ffffff, created for the INDIVISIBLES limited-edition publication, Subtropics Editions, 2022.
Ffffff (2007) | 30″ excerpt from the original 8′54″ miniature 5.1 sound installation. A 3′ stereo excerpt was released in 2022 as part of INDIVISIBLES by Subtropics Editions.
Floor Flute is a sound sculpture by Miami artist Robert Chambers. Its antique organ bellows supplies air through rubber hoses to five attached recorders, ocarinas, whistles and other wind instruments. Pressing the bellows sends a single breath through all five instruments at once.
Cecilia Fajardo-Hill wanted to include the sculpture in Fortunate Objects, but its age and fragility made public operation impractical. At Robert’s suggestion, CIFO commissioned me to create a sound installation that would allow the sculpture to be heard without requiring visitors to manipulate it.
The first proposal involved placing speakers beside or around the sculpture. I suggested instead that the sound should originate from within it. We found a 5.1 home-theater system with speakers small enough to be threaded through the sculpture’s rubber hoses. Each of the five main speakers emerged where one of the wind instruments had been attached, while the subwoofer—which also contained the amplification and playback equipment—was concealed behind the bellows.
RECORDING THE SCULPTURE
CIFO delivered the complete sculpture to the iSAW studio, where I recorded its components one breath at a time. Each of the five instruments was activated and recorded approximately twelve times. The sound produced during one breath could differ greatly from the next according to its duration and to whether an instrument was left alone or manipulated while air passed through it.
The bellows was recorded separately as it supplied air to each instrument. Its low mechanical sounds were later assigned to the subwoofer behind the physical bellows.
The composition was organized by breath rather than by a shared duration. Five recorded activations could begin together, but because each breath lasted a different length of time, their relationships continually changed. New combinations emerged as one instrument ended while others continued. The same simple action therefore produced a complex and constantly shifting miniature sound field.
The five recordings were returned to their corresponding physical locations. The sound of each whistle, recorder or ocarina emerged from the hose where that instrument belonged, while the bellows sounded from behind the sculpture. The resulting 5.1 field occupied an area only about a foot and a half square.
Played from a DVD through the concealed Sony HT-IS100 system, the 8′54″ composition repeated during exhibition hours. It gave the impression that Floor Flute was sounding itself while remaining physically untouched.
The completed installation entered the CIFO collection as an integrated work: Robert Chambers’s Floor Flute with Ffffff installed within it. The sound installation, its playback system and its spatial relationship to the sculpture were acquired together.
RELATED OPENING PERFORMANCE
At the opening of Fortunate Objects on December 5, 2007, Robert Chambers and I presented Discharge (Descarga), a twenty-minute Fluxus-style performance organized in three parts. I conceived its form as Three Breaths:
- Solo — One Breath
“Catch one breath into a balloon and create a piece from it.”
Gustavo Matamoros, Balloon Horn - Duo
An improvisation by Gustavo Matamoros, playing Toy Cow, and Robert Chambers, playing Gramophone - Trio
Gustavo Matamoros and Robert Chambers manipulating the wind instruments of Floor Flute, with DJ Kool operating the bellows
The performance was related to the installation through the idea of breath but remained a separate work.
LATER NOTATED VERSION
Between 2011 and 2012, I prepared a notated performance version of Ffffff, translating the sculpture’s operating principle into instructions for one bellows operator and three to six performers.
Each compression of the bellows constitutes one breath. During it, performers may finger, submerge, cover, uncover or obstruct the attached instruments until the air runs out. Instruments may be exchanged between breaths.
Although the score identifies Ffffff as a 2007 work, the 2011–12 dates document when this later version was formalized. It has never been performed. Any realization would depend upon renewed access to Floor Flute, which remains in the CIFO collection.
Score: FFFFFF-score
PRESENTATION AND PUBLICATION
December 5, 2007–February 17, 2008
Fortunate Objects
Curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill
CIFO, Miami
December 5, 2007
Discharge (Descarga) / Three Breaths
Fluxus concert presented during Art Basel Miami Beach
Robert Chambers, Gustavo Matamoros and DJ Kool
2022
Ffffff was published as a three-minute stereo track on INDIVISIBLES, a limited-edition art album by Gustavo Matamoros and David Dunn, published by Subtropics Editions. Each physical copy includes Ralph Provisero’s visual interpretation of the work.