In Wah Wah Teapots (Landscape for Alvin Lucier), sound emanates from two landscape adorned porcelain teapots with kinetic lids. These mechanical teapots are instruments: the fast-moving lid gesture generates an analogue wah-wah effect typically achieved electronically using an effects pedal while the smaller movement alters the resonant character of the teapot with the amount of emitted sound. Two teapots, two sound sources. Stereo teapots? The mechanical teapots are a nod to Alvin Lucier’s Nothing is Real (Strawberry Fields), a work composed for piano, amplified teapot, tape recorder, and miniature sound system.
Wah Wah Teapots’ sound is 49 seconds of signature Ry Cooder slide guitar taken from the opening scene of the film Paris, Texas. The guitar phrase cycles from a recognizable whole to fragments of various lengths and numbers of repetitions (according to a set compositional process) before returning to a recognizable whole again.
Exhibition History: 2018 Museum London (London, Canada); 2008 Art Gallery of Windsor (Canada); 2007 Museum London (Canada); 2006 Jessica Bradley Art + Projects (Toronto, Canada)
Press: Thorpe, Josh. “Sound Offerings, The Art of Marla Hlady.” Border Crossings, vol. 26, no. 1, 2007, pp. 38-44.
Dault, Gary Michael. “Charming teapots rattle and hum.” The Globe and Mail, October 28, 2006.