This installation takes its starting point from the last sentence of a 1975 essay, What Makes Me Tick?, by architect Philip Johnson. (Johnson designed Muhlenberg's art building and gallery). This essay was written when Johnson was moving away from a programmatic approach in architectural design, toward a more intuitive practice. To honor that shift, I wanted to create a situation that encompassed both processes. Like the act of architectural fabrication, I wanted to create a score that would set a process in motion and allow a group of students to work collaboratively towards making a sculpture. (In the relationship of an architectural plan developing into the activity of building, I see a parallel with a musical composition that musicians realize and perform).

I sent a text score, suggesting possible ways of translating Johnson's words into sculptural forms based on number equivalents related to the alphabet (a= 1, 6=2, etc.), to Scott Sherk and his sound-art students. All the decisions and fabrication of this sculpture were directed by the students through conversations with Scott about my score. The sound elements were created through a combination of two systems: First, an alphabet - a musical note played by me on a small electronic-tone generator. Second, a series of recordings of the gallery space that Scott made by placing a microphone inside each different length of the pvc pipe. Thus, we have three iterations of Johnson's text - two audio translations, and one sculptural.

I'm grateful to the students, and to Scott, for their participation in realizing this project.

Thomas Bishop - Ivan Brown - Matthew Caraway

Kyle Coupe - Matthew Dunne - Paul Henry

Samuel Kaplan - Celine McBride - John Merklinger

William Munday - Alex Price - Justin Rothman

Ryan Shaughnessy - Ian Sugerman - Hannah Woodward

Steve Roden, 2010