Aferro Publication No. 17, Elevator Music

Elevator Music, curated by Adam Trowbridge – original run ca. December 2010

Concept by Emma Wilcox

Guest Juror Adam Trowbridge

Forward by Adam Trowbridge

Design by Andrew Wilkinson

Curator’s Statement: A Screenplay

The audio pieces in this exhibition were selected instinctively to form an array of sensations related to the concept of elevator travel and the experience of elevator music. Music is defined here as a range of sound as in John Cage describes them: “I am talking about sound that doesn’t mean anything … I love sounds, just as they are … I don’t want a sound to pretend that it’s a bucket or that it’s President or that it’s in love with another sound.” Some pieces in Elevator Music are distinct and direct, others are fleeting arrangements of sound.

My own interest in the concept of elevator music is related to the distance between the use of elevators in cinema, as intense spaces for dramatic action, and our own banal experience of daily elevator use. Screenplays denote elevator scenes as an interior shot: INT ELEVATOR. A search for “int elevator” turns up movie and television interior scenes that occur in elevators as well as real estate descriptions of properties featuring interior elevators and computer code which includes integer variables named “elevator”. The following is a composition based on those results.

Published by Gallery Aferro