Thrust Projects

Wendell Kling Toothpick Music Box , 2005

A Sound and Projection Show: Nov 12, 2006, 7 pm

Toothpick structures, camera, projected video, amplifier, music box; Variable Dim.

Inspired by childhood projects, I have created small structures made out of toothpicks. As a child I would spend hours building such structures in order to have the cathartic experience of burning them. As a musical score for the toothpick performance I have created an instrument using altered mechanical music box movements. Built into the miniature theater, eight altered music box movements are mounted, each playing a tune unintended by its makers. The ordinarily saccharine tunes played by the movements ("Somewhere Over the Rainbow", "My Favorite Things") are rendered unrecognizable by careful alteration. The variously altered and amplified musical movements played simultaneously create a stilted, melancholic rhythm that rises to a non-lyrical crescendo as the toothpick structures burn.

A Science Fiction: Against a backdrop of a (perhaps) post-apocalyptic toothpick city, crudely built geodesic toothpick domes, toothpick rocket ships and other toothpick structures slowly turn, built as a monument to the populist and utopian ideals of a lost and nearly forgotten Modernism. As a new day dawns, even these monuments prove themselves to be all too temporary.

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