Instructions for ‘Listening to Broken Music / Anleitung zum Anhören Kaputter Musik’ is a participatory installation and hands-on experiment addressing the physics of sound and vinyl records through everyday materials. Developed in response to Fluxus artist Milan Knížák’s deconstructed and recomposed record series Destruierte Musik, the work invites audiences into exploratory listening in a DIY setting.
The installation provides materials and workspace for building functional sound resonators. A large-scale hand-drawn diagram and how-to video guide participants through constructing lo-fi resonant devices similar to a gramophone horn, using balloons, tin cans, needles, and glue. Participants then select a record, place it on a modified record player, and position their resonator to hear acoustic transmissions of the music. In doing so, they make sound’s material conditions tangible by tracing the physical logic of recorded audio from groove to air, in a setting that moves between physical experiment, experimental sound and craft workshop.
The How To diagram was illustrated by Darsha in Procreate using an Apple Pencil, the Technical Pencil brush and a custom colour palette titled Tin Can.
Instructions for Listening to Broken Music was commissioned by Kunstmuseum Bochum for HOW WE MET, a major group exhibition centred on the Fluxus collection of gallerist Inge Baecker, presented alongside contemporary artists responding to this legacy.
The creation of this artwork was supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Germany.
Special thanks to Eva Busch and Shasti for their support in making this work possible. And further thanks to Ateliers Belleville, and curators of Construction/Conduction — Mathieu Arsenault et Sarah Ève Tousignant.
Photo Credit: Alexis Bellavance + Camille Dubuc