Filomena Renzi
The Forest of Repeated Action, 1994

A ‘forest’ of some twenty ticking mechanical clocks with ‘paper trees’ attached that shake and make sound when alarm goes off. The audience may wonder around in the forest, hearing ticking and alarms from various distances.

Strangely enough, reading about this pieces caused me to re-think my “Anticipation Piece” as a social sound sculpture. Participating audience members were handed an egg timer each and requested to stay silent until their timer goes off. There was certainly an ongoing sonic element and there were all kinds of odd relations emerging between participants and their timers, between participants, between participants and a mic I had set up to record the proceedings… Also, a variety of responses to unsynchronised and underwhelming ringing after all the suspense has been built up waiting for it.