Installations

The Sensation of Distribution is a reprise of Mitchell Akiyama and Brady Peters’s 2019 work, The Distribution of Sensation, which they created while artists in residence at The Bentway, a large, urban public space situated under an elevated highway in downtown Toronto. The Distribution of Sensation was a sound sculpture composed of PVC pipes installed around The Bentway that invited visitors to listen through the natural resonance of the cylinders, creating a series of musical experiences across the site. Mimic the plumbing infrastructure of the site, the installation was meant to create aesthetic slippages that might potentially lead to confusion as to what exactly functioned or counted as art.

The re-installation of this work at NAISA blends the pipe sculptures into a more domestic vernacular. Mounted on NAISA’s exterior walls to impersonate furnace vents and erupting from the ground to suggest rogue plumbing gone awry, The Sensation of Distribution re-invites visitors to explore the unnoticed or imminent sonic and aesthetic potential of our built environment.

The Decomposing Piano is a semi-permanent outdoor installation exploring the effects of the Northern Ontario climate on an upright piano. Lately there has been interest among arts organizations in the phenomena of the Ruined piano. A ruined piano is a piano left outside in a natural environment for an extended period of time (see https://bolleter.wixsite.com/warpsmusic for further insights). This project began in December 2022 at the stage where the piano was still playable despite some tuning deficiencies. As time goes on it will become more and more difficult to play. However, in the gradual "decomposition" of the piano over time, new sounds will emerge with increasing amounts of aid from amplification. Through its entire decomposition process, the public is invited to play the piano and experience its transformation until it deemed unsafe to play.