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An Indoor Thunderstorm Lets You Make Music Using Thunder And Lightning

Chris Klapper and Patrick Gallagher’s Symphony in D Minor lets visitors create music using the elements of a thunderstorm.

'SYMPHONY in D MINOR' PHILADELPHIA OCT.20 - DEC. 2, 2012 from Patrick Gallagher on Vimeo.

It seems that 2012 is the year artists are bringing the weather indoors. Not only has Random International made it rain indoors with their Rain Room installation at the Barbican, London, but now artists Chris Klapper and Patrick Gallagher have created an indoor thunderstorm with their piece Symphony in D Minor at the Skybox gallery, Philadelphia.

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The interactive installation is a series of kinetic sculptures where visitors can conduct (in the musical sense) different elements of a thunderstorm. The piece, inspired by arcus cloud formations that appear in advance of a massive thunderstorm, consists of four tubes—22ft x 5ft—suspended in the air which move when people push them. Once swung, they produce the unmistakeable sound of thunder crackling above, followed by the patter of rain.

The artists call each cylinder an individual instrument which produces an “aleatoric music composition,” using the sounds associated with a thunderstorm including thunder, wind, rain, and lightning along with the “subtle breeze of an isolated wind far away.” Sounds like great fun, and it’s probably the closest you’ll ever get to feeling what it’s like to be Zeus.

[via Design Boom]

@stewart23rd

image © Ken Schular