PGA (Please Generate Art): “Sound Collective” Progress

Awhile back, I mentioned that my classmates and I were working on a project for the graduate student component of Manifest, Columbia College Chicago’s annual, urban arts festival, which showcases the work of Columbia’s graduating students. The project devoted to graduate students is called PGA (Please Generate Art) an over-the-top, interactive art exhibit disguised as a miniature golf course. Caitlin O’Meara, Laura Bock, and I put our pretty heads together to propose a noisy and bright installation for PGA (Please Generate Art) called Sound Collective. With DIY instruments, flashy colors, and mini golf obstacle courses, we hope that Sound Collective appeals to the child-like musicians in PGA’s participants and draws forth the joy of making noise and music that most of us keep buried and hidden from criticism.

We’ve been ambitious, but with help from Chris Naka, the Coordinator of Columbia’s Workroom (where we’ve been constructing Sound Collective), David Marts (my coworker and the man who helped create PGA), and the best husband in the world (Brian, obv), we’ve made quite a bit of progress in the last few weeks. Take a look!

The Workroom has many tools and supplies at our disposal. It is a happy place.

We had to order some special supplies, though. I guess we couldn’t have expected the Workroom to have 2,000 balloons and 400 noisemakers….

Caitlin, Laura, and I are each in charge of one section of Sound Collective. We’ll also be working together on a fourth section, which is where the balloons and noisemakers will come into play. My section is a giant xylophone! Oddly enough, the college had a bunch of unused bamboo in a basement on campus (perhaps from last year’s PGA…?). David picked up a lovely rainbow of paint, and we got to work brightening up the bamboo.

Once dried, Chris and his student workers graciously constructed the xylophone for us with a couple of 2×4′s and some nails.

Caitlin’s section is a jingle bell tunnel! That’s 600 jingle bells, people.

She got pretty creative with a dryer vent and some scissors.

Here, Caitlin and Laura work feverishly to tie all those little jingle bells to the wire skeleton of the dryer vent, using flashy strings of tinsel.

Oh, to be a golf ball sliding down this whimsical tunnel…

Laura’s section has been dubbed the tambo-ring of fire. It involves lots of handmade tambourines (using painted embroidery hoops and colorful pipe cleaners), a hula hoop, and a ramp.

Brian is a masterful tambourine maker.

And did I mention that the hula hoop lights up? You don’t wanna miss this, folks. Come and join the fun on Friday, May 4th. We’ll be at 1104 S Wabash (Chicago, IL) from 1pm to 7pm. Make some noise with us!