Improvisation with Drumsticks is a suite of six prints made by drumming directly on to a waxed copper-plate and then etching and printing from it several times. As I continued to drum and etch my performance was captured on the plate. The more I etched, however, the more my earlier marks were obliterated. The plate I used was the same size and shape as a snare drum or cymbal. This meant that as well as capturing each improvisation the plate was also the instrument with which these performances happened; as the wood of the sticks chimed on the resonate copper surface of the plate both performance and score was both generated and documented. The plate was increasingly covered by drumming marks and eventually destroyed, resulting in the etchings as a score that document the initial improvisation.
Improvisation with Drumsticks, 2008
Etching on paper. Six etchings, 50 x 35 cm each
Photo: Guy Archard
