CAT PRINT

A player-piano replays a recording of a cat that walked across the keys 30 years ago. The piece illuminates the death and revivification inherent in all mechanical recording. As the keys visibly repeat the act of being depressed, they reveal the imprint of the live body and follow the negative space of the creature. As with the piano rolls that recoded Rachmaninov playing his own music in 1919, the observer is attending a kind of séance and the random, spontaneous, and unrepeatable elements are extrapolated back to the player and composer as a kind of signature of presence and authenticity.  In Cat Print, the same is true although it is composed (almost) entirely accidentally.

CAT PRINT was shown in the group sound-art show at Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Greenwich, not necessarily in the right order Feb – April 2023