What is the role of art in the time of war?
Battlefield Poetry is a garden of 5 large steel artworks – stylized harp, cocoon, willow tree, mourner and mayfly (the god of death) – which joins an interactive textured soundscape to answer that art is the fundamental, all-embracing facilitator of the times that try our souls.
All 5 artworks are made from steel, glass, canvas, light and sound. Each is 10-15’ tall and 5-15’ wide and each is a recognizable object or figure, heavily stylized and illuminated. At the site center steel banners from an elegant signpost tell each sculpture’s story.
Atunement (Knowing What Story to Tell) is a harp; An elegant curved frame 12’ tall, suspending a glass sun.
Death is a mayfly with stained glass wings, climbing up a sinuous branch.
A Stillness of Rain is an architectural tree; branching to 14’ in a rising spiral hanging illuminated geometric fruits.
Emergence is a cocoon; a tall enclosed space of curved steel geometries with glass veins and glowing lights.
Loneliness (Art Besieged) is mourning; a stooped figure with strong veins of vertical steel and glass hides his face.
Dimensions
16’ x 100’ x 100’ (each sculpture is 5-15’ wide 10-15’ tall)
Materials
Steel, Patina, Glass, Canvas, Light, Sound
Year
2024-2025
Battlefield Soundscape
Participants control the garden’s soundscape. Each artwork continuously plays 1 of a set of 3 unique digital instruments (3 possibilities for each sculpture, thus 15 total but only 5 playing at a time = nearly 250 different combinations of sound). Participants choose which instruments will sound using a bank of buttons elegantly arranged at the site center. They can set the mood to a dour thrum of bass sounds and sharp percussion or elevate the tone to an aria of plucked strings and atmosphere.
This audio clip is a rough draft sample of two tracks of generative audio.
Each sculpture expresses a universal concept about art in war-time and also tells an intimate story. /A Stillness of Rain/ evokes the frozen instant of new knowledge, such as the declaration of war which changes the world forever, but the sculpture also references the specific phone call receiving news of my grandmother’s death.
The audioscape harmonizes each artwork’s inter-penetrating themes. The story of Milan Kundera’s exile ‘Loneliness – Art Besieged’ melds with ‘Atunement – Knowing What Story to Tell’ and then ‘Emergence – Art Heals’. By transposing from visual to auditory modalities (from distinct images to an integrated tapestry of sound) the fundamental connections between concepts become inescapable.
Lastly, the god of death would always be a mayfly, born and buried within a day.
The seeds of terror, joy, suffering, strength and rage are planted in every story. Together these (timely) artworks summon the courage to confront fearsome darkness and navigate through with hope.
