aaamusic | On 05, Jun 2012

During the Summer Olympics the Central Line, through the heart of London, will take you to tranquil Fairlop Waters, a nature reserve and country park in the London Borough of Redbridge. You can get off at Hainault for ‘Nothing Is Set In Stone’, an interactive standing stone and musical sculpture by composer and artist Mira Calix. It’s commissioned by Oxford Contemporary Music and is there between 21st June and 9th September, 2012.

The Mayor of London has celebrated the work: “With this musical sculpture Mira Calix has managed to wrest not blood, but music from a stone,” said Boris Johnson, “putting the music into rock and creating an exciting new cultural attraction.” It’s part of the Secret Hidden London Festival that he will introduce during the Olympic Games to encourage more visitors, with an interest in culture, to visit events taking place in relatively unknown spaces.

Mira Calix has released five albums on the pioneering electronic music label Warp, and won a British Composer Award. She is creative, experimental and innovative and currently lives in the Suffolk countryside where she spends considerable time outdoors collecting sounds that she can use in a studio.

Mira Calix collaborated with geologists from the Natural History Museum and studio designers from Overcraft founded by George Konstantinou and Alexandros Tsolakis. The sound designer is David Sheppard from Soundintermedia, the fabricator Broa Sams and the producer Keri Elmsly.

Her aim was to make a physical experience of music, by pushing sound through gneiss or ‘angel stone’, a rock with a striped pattern. The sounds are based on field recordings from South Africa, her country of birth. As the audience moves around the monolith they can construct and shape the composition from fragments. The composition has movements and will be slightly different depending on where someone stands, moves, or rests their ears.

The sculpture is made from about five tons of stones varying in size from large to small pebbles. Its height is just under four metres and the diameter just under two metres.

Access All Areas Music interviewer Anthony Weightman chatted to Mira Calix in London ahead of the opening day for her sculpture.

A.W.

There seems to be relatively little collaboration between people creating art installations and musicians. Ballet and operatic productions collaborate with artists and designers, but most art galleries tend to be silent places. Do you feel that some people are very visually aware, while others have a heightened perception of sound?

M.C.

I do. I think even those who have a heightened sense of sound (and I classify myself as such) will always be led by their eyes. It just happens. People seem to be informed first by their eyes. There are few who seem to be informed first by their ears. We live in a world which is so visually dictated. If you’re in a room with a television, everyone’s eyes eventually get drawn to it, even if the sound is off. It’s that classic thing. If it’s on it sucks your attention, but if the radio’s on you do a million other things, which is why I’m a radio lover. I’ve done a lot of collaborative work with visual artists and so I’m very focused on how you make things work holistically. The sound and visual elements of the work are in fifty fifty proportions. If one totally dominates the other, it can become like music accompanying a film. I’m very interested in a balance. Grabbing peoples’ attention with their eyes, but also giving them something for their ears. How do you do that? So much of my work in the last few years has been very much along those lines. Trying to give people both, but making it look like one thing and not two separate things.

A.W.

Strangely, some of my favourite live music videos are set in a stony landscape. Page & Plant in the Welsh slate quarries for No Quarter. Seth Lakeman live from the cliff top Minnock Theatre in Cornwall. Do you have a favourite live music video from a stony landscape?

M.C.

I’ve never thought about it at all, but I’ve a vague recollection of a Pink Floyd documentary Live At Pompeii.

A.W.

I’ve seen it myself. They set it up and there’s no audience!

M.C.

Exactly. I have to pick the one I remember. That one!

A.W.

Young children can be charming and amusing. They tend to be very honest and about sculpture, lacking the inhibition and diplomacy of adults. What do you think young children will be saying about your sculpture?

M.C.

I don’t know what they’ll actually be saying. I hope they think it’s something magical. I’ve thought about young children. On a very practical level there are sensors and speakers that work to a height and we cut off just under a metre. So, I hope they think that something like an Asterix or Obelix have come alive. I hope they think it’s magic.

A.W.

I understand that the composition will be slightly different according to the way you move round the sculpture. So, am I right in saying that if you’re out for a brisk walk to lose some weight and you run round it, you’re going to have a different experience?

M.C.

Yes, you will. It’s not that for each individual person something new happens. Because you physically have to move around it, sound vanishes, moves away and then goes towards you. You can’t experience the same thing as the person who’s standing half a metre from you. They will hear completely different things. If you run around it you’ll hear something very different from someone who stands and ponders. So, by its design, leaving aside the technology magic, the physical form means you can’t hear the same thing as someone else. Not really.

A.W.

It’s surprising that stone is sometimes a natural part of a landscape when you don’t expect it to be. It’s not necessarily taken to a particular place from somewhere else. For example, some amphitheatres in the Mediterranean were actually cut from solid rock. Do you find these sorts of misconceptions interesting?

M.C.

It was amazing recently. I went to South Africa for this piece. The area was a sculpture park and the bush part was dolomite. Everything you stand on is dolomite, it’s just that there’s a certain amount of soil above it.
Actually you’re on solid rock, it’s just invisible. I dug a hole and beyond 30 centimetres I was hitting solid rock wherever I went.

A.W.

Sometimes sculptures put into a natural landscape seem to haunt it long after they’ve been taken away. For example, I live close to the old Chiltern Sculpture Trail and people tend to still call it by that name, long after the sculptures have disappeared from what is now just a forest walk. So, do you feel that good sculptures tend to be remembered and, beyond September, will your sculpture be given a good home?

M.C.

Yes. There are some homes for it in the offing. When it goes somewhere else it will be quite different. I had the idea for the piece before I found Fairlop Waters. I was given a set of sites to look at by the Mayor of London. I walked onto the site and knew it was right straight away.

A.W.

So, sometimes you can walk onto a site and immediately know it’s not right?

M.C.

I did. There were practical reasons why, but there’s a certain feeling. It just wasn’t the right place. I hope it’s something people will enjoy. I hope, once it’s gone, that physical land on top of a hill will be somewhere that people will miss that piece. It will seem like it should be there. There’s a Barbara Hepworth at Aldeburgh that’s been there as long as I’ve known. That piece of land and that particular sculpture are one and the same. I can’t separate them. You also look at the view and its all one thing. She didn’t make it for that site but, if they removed it, in my imagination it would still be there. Sculpture out of doors becomes part of that space. When they stay there for years, they take root.

A.W.

When I walk my West Highland Terrier, she’s usually highly suspicious when some unknown motionless object suddenly appears on a route she’s familiar with. Often it has to be barked at. How do you think that dogs are going to react to your sculpture?

M.C.

We’ve considered the dogs too! Especially in relation to the censors. I’m sure dogs will want to mark their territory on my sculpture.

A.W.

I thought so.

M.C.

That’s fine. It’s nature. I have no idea but, I think it might be something a bit more instinctive for them. There may be a battle of wills. There’s not much I can do about that.

A.W.

Through your sculpture you’re made aware of contrast: the relative permanence of stone is contrasted with the transience of sound. Do you feel that the importance of contrast is much underestimated in making aesthetic decisions? For example, if something modern, bold, interesting and adventurous is put next to something traditionally beautiful, surely you’re more able to appreciate the good qualities of both.

M.C.

I really think so. I think in aesthetic terms. I don’t think you can have something truly beautiful without something slightly ugly next to it.

A.W.

There are those who feel that an old, picturesque Suffolk cottage should be placed next to another one of the same kind. I personally don’t think that.

M.C.

I think in terms of Le Corbusier next door. I’m a fan of brutalist architecture, which is a great example of that.

A.W.

You’re appealing to a new audience by not putting your sculpture in a studio but somewhere more accessible. How do you feel about what’s called Classical Revolution, which since 2006 has moved from San Francisco to many cities worldwide? It’s happened partly because of the ‘stuffy’ and ‘aloof’ image of classical music. Classical music itself isn’t changed but merely taken out of concert halls and put into pubs and clubs.

M.C.

I think it’s a good idea. I’m a great fan of classical music and composers. Unfortunately, some people are very intimidated by their surroundings or a set of rules they don’t understand. It doesn’t have to be that way. So, you can take it out of that context and remove that intimidation and just give people music. They respond to it just as music. So, that’s a really good thing. Ultimately that music is revered. Like Shakespeare, if you’re talking about the classics, for example Beethoven or Mozart, that music is revered for a reason. People have an opportunity to actually hear it and not just to hear about it. They just did Stravinsky in Trafalgar Square. Firebird is one of my favourites. One of the most extraordinary things ever. Hopefully loads of people who wouldn’t go to The Barbican to hear the London Symphony Orchestra, have now heard it. Maybe it made their day. Even if three people in Trafalgar Square went to buy Stravinsky, then it’s achieved something. I think it’s a positive thing. I’m not a purist. The orchestra that performed it was exceptional. Great people playing great music for everyone. That’s a good thing. I embrace organisations that are attempting to do this.

A.W.

I think Classical Revolution has spread to 25 cities worldwide over the last 6 years.

M.C.

Unfortunately, some people can’t afford concerts. It can be expensive, but mostly they just feel intimidated. It’s not their culture and they feel they don’t know how to behave.

A.W.

You seem to be eager to take on new creative challenges which interest you, but are there any artistic environments in which you feel uncomfortable? Are there specific places or people or types of music that make you feel ill at ease?

M.C.

Not really. I’m not a purist and, in that sense, I don’t feel there’s anything verboten to me. There are a lot of things I’m instinctively interested in. I know about them and I’ve worked in those environments. I would never say ‘no’ on principle to something. I’m not crazy about the little I’ve heard about def metal. I’m sure that, within that genre, there’s probably something amazing that would interest me. I really like the fear factor. I like not to know how to do something. I actually like to be scared. I don’t completely know, when I say ‘yes’, how I’m going to do something. I love the process of working it out. It makes me feel alive. I love the thing that makes me feel ‘s***, how am I going to do this?’ I have to absolutely believe that the people I’m working with are brilliant and can do something I don’t know how to do. Then I’m learning and that’s exciting again.

A.W.

Some brilliant musicians are absolutely petrified before going on stage, but there’s an element in their personality which pushes them on.

M.C.

Yes, that adrenalises them and focuses the mind. It makes you feel alive. Some people throw themselves out of aeroplanes. I would never do that, but I will attempt to make a sculpture. Its thrill seeking. I’m looking for things that appear to be really difficult and I love the process of figuring it out. Art is about 50% problem solving.

A.W.

Thank you very much indeed for your time.

M.C.

It’s a pleasure.

Anthony Weightman