The Skateboard as an Instrument

TITANIK ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE.
Simon Morris: Musique Concrete.

Heidi von Wright / ÅU

American Simon Morris works now as a first artist-in-residence in Sumu, the new renovated room adjoined to gallery Titanik. The basic idea of Sumu, run by artists’ association Arte, is that the international and national artists who work in the intersection of new media and contemporary art have a possibility to come and work in there. During their work period, the artists live in the Domus guesthouse, in a room renovated for the purpose.

Video and sound artist Simon Morris, who lives and works in Paris, France, has now stayed in Turku for half a month. When ÅU met him, he had already got to know some of the city and the places where people are skateboarding. He has just started his own work.

And, it is actually just skateboard art Simon Morris is working with. He composes music with the skateboard as his instrument. The project is called “Musique Concrete: Transforming Space, Sound and the City Through Skateboarding”.

His skateboard has wheels that shine blue light when rolling. He has put light sensors in the truck. The wheels emit light signals. Those signals are operated by the computer. The light signals are transmitted to sound signals by a computer program. The difference in the intensity of the light makes different kind of sounds. At the moment he works a lot in front of his computer, he is programming a language by which the light turns into sounds. Morris has previously studied languages; french, italian and chinese among others.

- This has a lot to do with languages, vocabulary and syntax, art and technology go hand in hand, says Morris.

Simon Morris has already worked a lot, but he still has a long way to go with the techinical and artistic side of the work. Fortunately he still has lots of time to work.

- I was counting on having about eight different sensors on my board, tells Morris.

Morris skates around the gallery and one can hear from the amplifiers located in another room sounds of organ and drums. The sounds are changing according to the position of the skateboard.

- It doesn’t sound so good yet, but step by step it will develop, says Morris and smiles.
And then the sound turns to a hotchpotch of instruments or like a bird choir.

In his project Morris investigates skateboarding as a physical dialog between the individual and the city. Skateboarding has a lot to do with the identification of a space and sphere, and preparing movement on the basis of that. Skateboarding is a subculture that exists in all cities. Also those who do not skateboard have surely heard the sound of skateboarding on top of the asphalt. By the project of Simon Morris this monotonic sound turns into music.

At the moment it is not clear yet how he will present his work. He thinks about the possibility of making a performance in June. The presentation will also be filmed on video.

Åbo Underrättelser, local newspaper of the City of Turku
translation Sanna Syvänen