My Body is a Finger, 2019
Installation with wood, strings, tuning pins
Dimension variable
with Caroline Ann Baur
Ausstellungsraum Klingental/RANK, Basel Switzerland, 2019
Gessnerallee, Zurich Switzerland, 2019
link to audio
In reference to Ellen Fullman's Longstring Instrument, Vanessà Heer and Caroline Ann Baur developed this installation for the group exhibition «Within Others' Sounds» at the Klingental Ausstellungsraum / Provisorium RANK in Basel. The instrument can be played with eight fingers: depending on body movement and pressure or speed of the steps, the tonality of the transverse waves created by the length (11 metres) of the strings changes. A great variety of overtones result in unpredictable melodies. This way of playing the instrument, which is partly based on chance and partly on a mindful physicality, enables a special form of listening: it is much less about "mastering" the instrument, but rather about interacting with it and the other players.