Peter Chamberlain

CELL PHONES TO GOD (pre-contact)

Two pieces designed as a left-hand and right-hand pair. Constructed from bamboo and surplus hardware and potentiometers/knobs from a tuning module for helicopters from Pearl Harbor. Non-electronic but acoustically active. After dialing up the desired frequency and talking to God one hears their own voice reverberated slightly and environmental noise filtered by the bamboo chamber. Approximately 2" in diameter and 15" long including antennae.

These 6 pieces are a representative sample of a series of over 100 small objects constructed in the past 5 years; most done between 1993 and 1995. While the size of the pieces range from an inch long to four feet, most are the size of hand tools, implements, and table sculpture: 8" to 18". Some took five minutes to make, some five hours. Only a few have been exhibited.

In constructing these works I improvise...period. When I lose my focus - or regain consciousness I stop. In this sense my piano works (blues-phrase deconstructions) and my current object-making are produced from the same process; simple, painless, improvised deconstruction followed by reconstruction. The integrity of the resulting work is a direct ratio of the intensity of focus during production. The open- ended structures which tend to frame these mini-performances are determined responsively and impulsively.

The overall working structure is quite literal:

Gather industrial surplus from the dumpster outside oceanography - deconstruct, reorganize.

Gather already cut bamboo - trim, re-organize

Re-construct using what's in front of me - (no power tools or adhesives)

Apply titles of the weekly oceanography lecture series to the work.

There is no mystery to this procedure. The magic results from the integrity with which the procedure is carried out.

This work responds to the contrast between nature and technology that is so omnipresent on Oahu. Recycled technological fragments are combined with fragments of bamboo...fragments of nature. Each part retains a strong cultural sign which takes on a new significance in its re-combination. I am curious about the way various parts and various layers of meaning interact symbiotically at various levels of synergy. I am curious about the way these objects linger between logic and absurdity and somehow avoid the predictable clash between antithesis (can nature and technology "work" together?) I am curious about the resulting esthetics of ritual implement...of artifactness rather than artness. Still, it is the process of constructing these pieces that excites me.

[1992-1997]

Two structures assembled from cutural debris; one 6 feet tall and one 3.5 feet. Based on recognition and lament that the analog knob is disappearing from our techno-culture. Maturing during the pioneering days of analog electronic music meant endless hours of gently and precisely tweaking knobs of all types and sizes with a pleasure or distaste determined by the quality of the knob and the potentiometer it was attached to. Now we press expressionless digital buttons. These sculptures afford the participant a variety of tweaking experiences. Some of the knobs and pots are German-made in the 60's, some from classic Fender rock amps, some simply found, and others from the US Military (no expense spared). While a bit tongue-and-cheek and farcical in that the knobs control only themselves, the lack of an electronic response to the tweaking emphasizes the aesthetic of tweaking for tweaking's sake

Guitar recreated from Hagstrom junker.

"Nami" is Japanese for "wave".
Rotating speaker constructed from 1966 Baldwin organ parts and lab debris.

Guitar amp/12" speaker, 16" x 20"
(60's salon perm-dryer, 60's Sears tube amp)

This series of works began with the simultaneous pondering the way we meter time (relative to the millenium's end) and subsequent discovery and aquisition of some old tube-based electronic metronomes that clicked and flashed. They were made in Hartford Connecticut in the early sixties and perhaps the late fifties. I took them apart and reassembled them so they would fit inside units of these sculptural assemblages.

These clean electro-mechanical designs incorporated only one tube run by a small transformer and just a couple capacitors and resistors that caused a neon bulb to blink simultaneously with the activation of a small electro-magnetic solenoid that "tapped" a small metal plate attached to a larger thin sheet of wood/veneer. No actual speaker-type transducer is involved.

The assemblages that were built to house these analogue meters of time evolved from a process of "search and re-stroy" that has become my primary mode of composing. I had skateboards in the stash because they were solicited from my students to mount some 50-pound tube amps onto but I never got to that project.

The ceramic armadillo was a gift about 8 years ago and has been sitting in my office with a set of blinking Christmas lights shoved inside. It is a piggie-bank ("armie-bank"?) so it has the slot-shaped hole in it perfect for the light...as was the hole in the stomach of the Budha-guy (originally for incense?)

The dancing Budha-not-really-a-Budha and the fencing mask are garage sale debris that have been floating around in various personal tableaux for more than a few years.

In short, visual elements of these pieces were determined argely by practical considerations.

While very well crafted, these pieces emit the rawness of step-by-step improvisational construction - as best witnessed by the backs of the boards and the internal layout of electronics components and wiring. For better or worse, I am a sculptor, not an electrical engineer or machinist.

Given the approaching transition between millenniae, and given the indexical richness of possible "readings" of this work due to the unlikely juxtaposition of diverse cultural debris, these works seem to evoke all manner of personal decodings. That's great. As for "the artist's intentions"... it's about time and recycling and recomposing the stuff of life as an improvisational act. What you get is what you see.

Series of 4 self-contained audio/sculpture devices....consisting of a 10w amp, a 30w speaker, and a cd player.

Original installation incorporated 4 mono copies of WAR END PEACE cd, a collection of activist Hawaiian spoken word and music improvs recorded at Mokaki Lounge.... Primary voice is Imaikalani Kalahele.

Note that this is a variable content installation system that could employ other sonic content.

!n 1977 I bought a wood frame church built in 1880 about 1 mile from the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Racetrack.  I  wanted to leave the original feel and have a space for recording, performing, and making sculpture so I built a split level second floor over about 3/4 of the space and left windows to view down below.  My wife then, Leslie Altman was a dancer so the 30 x 40 foot dance floor was important too.  I built it mostly myself with some help from hired students and Leslie.  When I left to come to Hawaii I gave it up to Iris and her mom (via divorce).  Iris (daughter) grew up here and put together this set of then/now pictures.

Hokulea, Santa Maria, Resolution

This is a triptych structure consisting of three flat panels, each supporting a scaled template of the water-line displacement form of one of three boats that have directly effected the history and cultural development of Hawai`i. The panels rest on bamboo supports at 60 degree angles so that pumped water can cascade down the plane allowing us to observe how water moves around the hull-forms. Each of the units are self-contained, but installed as a 3-piece structure they sit on a steel mesh platform about a foot off the floor taking a 30 inch by eight foot long space against a wall. Pumps and water pans are masked but visible beneath. At the University Gallery installation a complex structure of bamboo and tar-paper to "framed" the piece and supported its own lighting system. An eight-foot tar-paper template of Leif Erickson's boat was added to an adjacent wall because, just prior to the exhibition it was proven that he beat Columbus to America.

Leonardo's studies of water dealt with displacement and reflection and some specifically with boat and fish forms. Starting from these, I noted that some studies were done in 1492...the year Columbus discovered America. This event can serve as a strong metaphor for the Rennaissance. I researched Columbus ships and found schematic diagrams of the Santa Maria. More relevant to Hawaii than Columbus was Captain Cook who landed here in 1778...nearly 300 years after Leonardos drawings.

In researching Cook's journeys I found that his last boat was The Resolution which he took to New Zeaalnd and later the Oregon coast to pick up sea-otter furs in 1779...the return trip to Hawaii being the one where he was killed. This last trip of Cook's also makes a link between Hawaii and Oregon where many Hawaiian sailors stayed. When I began the piece, a double-hulled canoe called the Hokulea was making its third or fourth trip to Tahiti...over 3000 miles in a dugout canoe modeled after the ones that brought the Polynesians to Hawaii in about 750 AD...about 750 years before Columbus hit America. This too adds a curious juxtoposition of time and geography to the other two trips over great water masses.

The studies I am doing compare...as Leonardo might have done...the differing interactions of the hull forms with flowing water (or the patterns produced by water flowing past these shapes). To accurately determine these patterns I have constructed a simple but fairly clever device upon which the different hull-forms can be placed while water is passed over them. This practical compromise varies greatly from the current scientific method of moving the form through the water. My method more resembles a liquid version of a wind-tunnel but in a shallow dimension. Although of no consequence, I note that I have been unable to find scientific hull-model studies on any of these three sailing vessels so I am sort of tickled that this imprecise study may actually be original.

1976.  First teaching job, first faculty show right after I arrived... no studio, no time.

Presented a diary of constructions made from unmatched socks I wore each day combined with materials I found around the art building