Artists Statement

Tags: Interactive Installation, Sound Art

Heart Band is an interactive sound installation in which twelve painted hand drums are activated by the motion of visitors. Each drum has a heart beat sound that increases in intensity and volume the closer the participant gets. Ideally, the drums would be played as an instrument by dancers.

• David Garneau (Metis) is a professor of Visual Art at the University of Regina. He is an artist, curator, and critical art writer mostly focused on contemporary Indigenous visual art, identities, and display cultures.
• Garnet Willis is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist, audio engineer, composer and instrument builder. He combines his disparate skills as, designer, wood and metal-worker, sound engineer and electronics geek to produce multivariate artworks that tend to revolve around sound. Garnet’s interests bring him to Concordia, where his FRQSC funded PhD research investigates the crossroads between sensation, form over time, sentient matter, and material agency. He draws upon ideas borrowed from stochastic music composition in his quest to develop shapeshifting sculptures that utilize complex material calculations driven by internal stresses resulting in unpredictable, real-time changes in physical form. He has garnered prestigious international awards for his compositions and recordings, including the Bourges Prize, and has had his work exhibited and performed in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Colombia. He has written/built many commissioned works including his “’flux” series of self-playing electromagnetic sound sculptures.