Compressive waves compose both music and exploding ordnance. Arms and instruments both affect distant targets. War funds art as well as arms.
Since my experience with the Canadian Forces Artist Program in Afghanistan, weaponry and musical instrumentation have resonated within my work. Tools for a Second Eden serve to move from the design and creation of hybrid musical weapons to their deployment in the hands of musicians or soldiers in both live and recorded tactical recitals. Compressive waves compose both melodic sound and exploding ordnance. Both arms and instruments affect their targets at distance. To raise a meticulously designed tool to your shoulder, to have expertise in the minutia that allows its discharge in the service of your purpose, to have the discipline, training, and allegiance to perform with your cohort, can put you equally in an orchestra pit or a gun turret. Reified here is also the uncomfortable, time honored, allegiance between cultural institutions, Art museums in particular, and donors with ties to the arms trade.