Peter Coffin, "UNTITLED (Wizard Of OZ)" / "LIVING" RBSTUdios 2014

Sound Design + Composition + Mixing + System Design + Installation

As part of Peter Coffin's "Living" exhibition, Matthew Patterson Curry provided assistance on "Untitled".  The audiovisual piece reimagines the entire soundtrack of the Wizard of Oz.  In addition to the audio engineering, Chemistry Creative produced the lighting and sound install.

From the NY Times, September 14, 2014:

In the basement of Red Bull’s lavish studio facilities in Chelsea is the latest iteration of Peter Coffin’s best-known work: “Music for Plants,” a project started in 2002 in which a wall of plants, nestled under the sidewalk grating — the original version was actually a greenhouse — is accompanied by music specially commissioned from Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Alice Coltrane, Arto Lindsay, Laurie Anderson, Sonic Youth and other artists.

Upstairs, Mr. Coffin attempts a similar symbiosis with light, sound and scent. One sculpture looks like a stage rig mounted with speakers, colored lights, scented smoke and bubble machines. The whole thing recreates the soundtrack to “The Wizard of Oz,” without the images. Another work is a rainbow made with signage letters: the alphabet illuminated in all of the hues of the spectrum. A third sculpture consists of a DeLorean, the futuristic car from the early ’80s, covered with bumper stickers promoting “Peace Through Music” or radical identities like “Tree Hugging Dirt Worshipper.”

As in previous works, like his “Tree Pants” (2007) — jeans custom sewn to fit the branches of trees — Mr. Coffin is pitch-perfect with plants. He uses them to recall utopian schemes from the ’60s and ’70s, from biospheres and eco-villages, like Findhorn in Scotland, to more mainstream ones, like Stevie Wonder’s soundtrack to the 1979 documentary “The Secret Life of Plants.”

With inorganic materials he’s a bit less deft, but still good at channeling the wonder and allure of New Age eco-activist aesthetics and repurposing them for the present moment.