Masticated Melodies
May / 2016
Graphic score of the streets of London
︎ Translating / Observation
Pavements have fascinated me for a long time, its a physical manifestation of the quantity of a community. Slowly and continually eroding the streets together, leaving behind traces of our presence. Right under our feet we have evidence of our past: from the crumpled up receipts, forgotten rubbish, and stray hairs, to the cracks we have created together, and the chicken-pox pattern made out of our chewing gum remains.
Forgotten traces of DNA, unwittingly left behind by strangers, have become the focus of the melodies created from the streets of London. These overlooked chewing gum spots are directly translated into a musical score for a mechanical music box, achieving the creation of a melody of the pavements of London. The analytical scaling down of streets from north, west, south and east London onto a six metre long strip of paper result in naive and random music, played on a crank music box. It is accompanied by a small publication depicting the streets where the melody was sourced from.
