Marc Nimoy at Dangerous Curve in Downtown LA.

By Jasmin Blasco.
jasmin.blasco@catalogrecords.com

“It’s a relationship of single to many” Marc Nimoy tells me when I ask him about the parallels between two of his works currently on display at Dangerous Curves in Downtown LA. On the far corner of the gallery is displayed “Box Song” an array of touch sensing circuit boxes that when activated trigger a simple sine tone out of a single speaker in the center. Visitors are invited to explore the installation and listen to the sonic environment they have themselves created.

“Constellation” a multimedia sculpture composed of miniature light bulbs hanging from the ceiling invites the viewer to listen to recordings of Nimoy’s voice broadcasting from above. The audio samples are of Nimoy uttering sentences that recount personal memories. One of the light flickers each time the corresponding memory is heard.
Nimoy tells me some of the memories are mundane and some are significant turning points in his life. What groups them together is the simple fact that they have occurred.

For Nimoy each of those captured and remembered instants aren’t to be organized in a hierarchy of value. With this piece he wishes to play with the idea of the self as a construct of singularities in time; hence the image of the constellation where each instant is a shining light. And much like the stars we see in the night sky, our mind attempts to assemble them in a shapely ensemble. Where there is nothing but a group of objects, our rationale demands that we link them together in significant ways.
Nimoy wishes to return to the state antecedent to the infusion of meaning: The instant of the occurrence.

In going back to his installation “Box song” Nimoy explains that the piece attempts to achieve a similar effect in a different way. Here he hopes to outline the parameters of the birth of musical activity. Marc sees the environment he’s created as a tool to reveal the foundational building blocks of musical experience: the sound, the instrument, the composer, the performer(s), the audience.
The piece naturally invites not one single participant, but several. Groups tend to form in activating "Box Song" and it's community is dispatched in the space that the piece inhabits. Nimoy uses physical space as a parameter of music when it is usually thought of as rooted in time.

Nimoy who is also a programmer and accomplished musician, chooses to express himself with the primary tool of his crafts.
Letting their skeletal constructions apparent, the works inform us on the desire for purity of thought in Nimoy’s investigative approach. In existing naked and untainted they invite us to interact with them earnestly and succeed in doing so by rewarding us with a tranquil presence.
-JB.
Photos by Jesse Menn and Becky Bryan.

Box Song and others: New work by Marc Nimoy is on display at Dangerous Curve in Downtown LA from July 7th to August 4th 2007.
Dangerous Curve: 1020 East fourth Place.
Los Angeles, CA 90013
(213) 617-8483
dangerouscurve.org
Marc Nimoy's Portfolio

---