A circle of 50 guitar FX pedals as art

News
By
published

And a 1965 Fender Strat on the ceiling

Isolation: the circle of life?
Isolation: the circle of life?

An art exhibition by former Urban Verbs guitarist Robin Rose features a circle of guitar FX pedals stuck to a wall, and a Fender Stratocaster stuck to a ceiling.

The works, part of a collection called Cypher, are on display at the American University Museum, Washington DC (until 17 May). We'll let Robin Rose explain the reasoning…

"Ascendant (below, starting top-right) captures the skyward joy that comes when you catch a good groove. Gearheads (that's us, presumably), from top to bottom: that's a 1965 Fender Stratocaster with reverse tremolo, gold guitar cable, Marshall 800 Lead Amp Head, 1960 Slant speaker cabinet."

Cypher

Cypher

"Isolation, the circular work on the left, is assembled from 50 guitar effect pedals, with interconnecting cables… each pedal is an independent entity (in reality, and metaphorically), and each is connected to its peers, but through a loop that never accepts external input or offers external output."

"So, we can use this to consider the social world, where social circuits can also loop closed and cut off outside contact."

Big Muff

Scott Matthews has a few more details on the Electro-Harmonix blog (he digs the Big Muff Pi at bottom-centre, of course) and makes one vital observation: "I first imagine myself standing in the middle of a dream pedalboard, but then I realize they're all turned away from me."

(Via: BoingBoing)

Tom Porter

Tom Porter worked on MusicRadar from its mid-2007 launch date to 2011, covering a range of music and music making topics, across features, gear news, reviews, interviews and more. A regular NAMM-goer back in the day, Tom now resides permanently in Los Angeles, where he's doing rather well at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).