This post is about the Sound Collage Book Box (in)curiosity in my recent Absurd Museum: Dr Kali Gehry’s Cabinet of (in)Curiosities and Ecstatic Nonsense.

The cigar box cover of the Sound Book Collage Box from the recent “Doctor Kali Gehry’s Cabinet of (in)Curiosities & Ecstatic Nonsense” exhibition.

Sound Collage Book Box started as a collage of a thrift store acquired loose bound book of 1950s photographs of unknown people. I ripped, glued, scratched and combined this book over a period of months, eventually causing the spine of this book to give way. Intending to replace the spine, and having just started to play with an Arduino-like audio card, I decided to make a metal spine, and bolt the book inside a cigar box while wiring page turning handles on the backs of the pages so that as the pages are turned, a new sound is triggered to accompany the viewed page. The sounds themselves intersect/collide with the imagery of their corresponding page, at times jarring, at times complimentary: bubbling water, road traffic, CB noise, sonar. When the project’s the cigar box is opened and closed, a creaking heavy steal door plays.

Video to come.

The audio being triggered by the metal latch of the cigar box cover of the Sound Book Collage Box from the recent “Doctor Kali Gehry’s Cabinet of (in)Curiosities & Ecstatic Nonsense”
The cigar box opened, showing the book cover of the Sound Book Collage Box from the recent “Doctor Kali Gehry’s Cabinet of (in)Curiosities & Ecstatic Nonsense”