What the title means

The title for this exhibition came from the title of the Oliver Sacks book: Musicophilia. The book is a collection of essays by Sacks about his observations over his professional and personal lifetime of how mysterious and powerfully our human brains are affected by music. I was very moved by the case histories of people who, after suffering a brain injury or neurological affliction, either lose some musical ability, or gain some ability they never had prior.

Faced with the task of creating a new body of work to fill an exhibition slot in the college's gallery schedule, I had been toying with the idea of making my own ceramic musical instruments, but didn't have any firm concept beyond the ones I had seen in 2004 in China made of porcelain.

It came to me in a moment that possibly I could make ceramic objects which would make sounds when moved, were struck with the hand, or other material, etc. The sound would happen when interacted with by humans, thus completing the connection between our brains' affinity for music (Musicophilia), and the ceramic form.

I researched traditional musical instruments, and found books on making musical instruments and discovered a huge range of forms and types I had never heard of before.

I discovered there are four types of musical instruments: idiophones(which make sounds through the vibration of their body), membranophones(which produce sounds when struck), chordophones(stringed instruments), and aerophones (wind instruments).

I knew that I would be unable to learn how to make traditional forms of intruments without years of study and trial and error, so I decided to attempt to make objects that make differing sounds in the same way as traditional objects but in different forms. I chose to use ceramic as the main component material because I have over 30 years of experience with it and understand its varying tonal qualitites better than any other material at my disposal.