Flipper A
(2007-2013)
Home page and publication: Flipper ABC.
Other versions: Flipper B, Flipper C.
An audio flipbook of 99 books starting with the letter ‘A’ (Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives of the Banff Center, November 2007).The recordings are left largely unaltered. The flipping action is miked closely in order to transpose physical materiality to the sonic realm. Each book’s weight, size, binding affects how a book will flip and consequently the recording.
They are presented in the order that they were flipped.
How a book sounds. Sounding a book.
For the installation version of Flipper A, the audio is presented in the form of three tracks. In the first each flip is separated by a silence which increases each time by one second, starting with one second until the last two flips which are separated by 99 seconds. In the second, a reverse trajectory occurs, it begins with a silent gap of 99 seconds after the first flip and then decreases by one second each time until we reach one second between the last two flips. In the third, both of the above tracks run simultaneously and each is panned hard left and right.
A commission by the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada for the Acoustic Networks project.
Recorded by Don Pyle at the Banff Center. Thanks to the staff at the Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives.
Presentation history
• Preliminary version presented at the Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives of the Banff Center, all day Thursday November 31, 2007. Diffusion on speakers placed inside the book return slot.
• Presented at the echo Art Fair, at the Central Library at 1 Lafayette Square in Buffalo, New York, September 6-8, 2013. Diffusion on speakers placed inside the book return slot.
• Presented at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), for their Audio Out Listening Post at the entrance of the AGYU, September 1-November 30, 2013. Diffusion on speaker placed at the entrance of the gallery, plus vinyl text of book titles and page count placed on glass at the entrance.
• Presented alongside Kirsty Robertson, Department of Visual Arts, Western University. September 16 – October 28, 2015.
