Oct

Fleeting Art: A High-Rise Swan Song

by Meredith Mullins on October 17, 2013

Artistic Expression at the Tour 13

Collage of color on walls and radiator, artistic expression of street art at the Tour 13 (Photo © Meredith Mullins)

Work by Kruella (Portugal) at the Tour 13
Photo © Meredith Mullins

Guess what’s the hottest attraction in Paris these days? Eiffel Tower? Notre Dame? Louvre Museum? Any of these answers could be true. But, at the moment, the hottest (free) ticket in town is a visit to a bright orange dilapidated building in the 13th arrondissement.

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France (Paris)/The World's Art & Design

Aug

In Tune with Paris: The Music of the Eiffel Tower

by Meredith Mullins on August 8, 2013

Joe Bertolozzi with rubber hammer on Eiffel Tower railing, a unique form of artistic expression.

Hundreds of feet high, Joe Bertolozzi “plays” an Eiffel Tower railing.
© Franc Palaia

The Voice Inside The Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower has been called many things. La Grande Dame. The Iron Lady. The ultimate symbol of Paris.

Several more imaginative names were provided by the artists and writers who protested its construction in 1887. A truly tragic street lamp. An ungainly skeleton. A half-built factory pipe.

Now, thanks to Joseph Bertolozzi‘s unique path for artistic expression, an even more inspirational name can be applied. The Eiffel Tower has become a musical instrument.

Oh, I see. There is music everywhere. You just have to be open to finding it.

rtolozzi with large mallet playing fence, artistic expression on the Eiffel Tower.

A musical fence . . . with quite a view.
© Franc Palaia

Tower Music

Composer/musician Bertolozzi has a penchant for discovering new ways of creating music. He has a long career of traditional composing, including orchestral works and choral music, but he is also inspired to find the voice inside inanimate objects and draw out natural sounds as the foundation for composition.

Like any percussionist at heart, he has a tendency to beat out rhythms on whatever is handy—the dinner dishes, doorknobs, railings, and any nearby surface that attracts him.

Enter—the Eiffel Tower . . . and the idea to play its surfaces. The seed was planted back in New York with an innocent comment by Joe’s wife in front of an Eiffel Tower poster. She pointed at the poster and made the sound “bong.” Joe’s imagination took over.

Couple that with Joe’s desire to explore an object’s inner rhythms and to let it speak. Add his persistence with layers of French authorities to get permission to “play” the tower.

It took years to pull it all together. He even had time to “practice” with the Mid-Hudson Bridge, an adventure that produced the lively Bridge Music composition.

Finally, all the elements aligned. The result: The Tower Music Project.

Joe Bertolozzi swinging a log into the Eiffel Tower structure, artistic expression in natural sounds.

Even the sturdiest structures vibrate if you hit them hard enough.
© Franc Palaia

An Impressive Range of Tones

Everything vibrates. And 7,300 tons of wrought iron is no exception. The tower has music inside.

“We often bang on it,” said one of the tower’s chief engineers, “to make sure the material isn’t defective.” But safety-check banging is different from Joe’s vision.

For the 12 days he was authorized to collect sounds at the tower, Joe and his team worked hard to leave no surface unbanged.

He tapped railings with assorted mallets at varying intensity. He used drumsticks on girders and spindles. He heaved a log into the sturdy iron legs.

He climbed secret spiral steps and elicited bell-like tones from their underside. He struck panels attached to a security fence and heard sizzle cymbals combined with a thunderous bass drum.

Joe Bertolozzi playing spiral stairs, artistic expression making music with the Eiffel Tower.

The bell-like tones of the secret spiral stairs.
© Franc Palaia

In all, he estimates that he collected more than 10,000 sounds (and managed to pause every now and then to savor Paris unfolding before him).

“I used to think of the tower as one thing, like a single brushstroke. Now, I look at it and see all its individual components,” Joe says with the admiration reserved for a complex literary character or multi-layered painting.

Joe Bertolozzi hammering with two arms, artistic expression on the Eiffel Tower.

Inspired by Paris vistas and the diverse tones of the tower.
© Franc Palaia

Who’s That Man Beating on the Eiffel Tower?

Music is universal. Rhythms are primal and contagious. So the passersby and onlookers during Joe’s percussive riffs often got involved in the action.

A pair of teenage tourists started rapping to Joe’s beat as he improvised. A tower security guard showed Joe pictures of himself playing the djembe (African drum)—perhaps hoping to play some tower parts himself?

Most everyone was curious, as the team of eight seemed dedicated to a quest, and were hard to miss with their microphones, recording gear, and the strange musical “tools” used to strike the tower.

The Tower Music Team in front of the Eiffel Tower, artistic expression from teamwork.

The Tower Music Team—a job well done.
© Franc Palaia

Back Home in the Studio

Now the cataloging of sounds and notes and the subsequent composing take place in the quieter environment of the studio. More long hours are needed, as Joe hopes to complete the final piece and an album in time for the 125^th anniversary of the tower next year.

Ideally, too, there will be a live performance. But that would take hundreds of musicians and more authorizations from the French government. Another goal would be an audio installation at the tower so visitors could hear the composition.

Eiffel Tower, an inspiration for artistic expression.

The legacy of the Eiffel Tower.
© Meredith Mullins

Brothers in Vision: Eiffel and Bertolozzi

Just like Gustave Eiffel in the original construction of the tower, Joe says, “There were delays and missed deadlines and push back. We were in good company. We both demonstrated perseverance and conviction of purpose to achieve our goals.”

For Eiffel, the tower has achieved a lasting legacy and the appreciation of architects and engineers as well as throngs of Paris visitors (7 million per year).

Bertolozzi, too, hopes that his artistic expression will have a lasting legacy with his completed composition, Tower Music.

And we hope that the OIC Moment of this story lives on. There is music everywhere. You just have to be open to finding it.

See Joe in action at the Eiffel Tower.

See Joe in action at the Mid-Hudson Bridge.

OIC thanks Franc Palaia for the use of his photographs.

Comment on this post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.

Meredith Mullins 8 Comments

France (Paris)/The World's Music

Jul

Paris Expo: Bravos and Bouquets for Urban Gardens

by Sheron Long on July 15, 2013

Roses on display at Paris Garden Show, featuring creative ideas in urban gardening. Image © Sheron Long

A bouquet of roses brightens a rainy day at Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries, annual Paris garden show.
© Sheron Long

Creative Ideas Find Fertile Ground

Plenty of creative ideas grew in the Paris salon of Gertrude Stein (early 1900s), including her famous quote:

A rose is a rose is a rose.

Though generally interpreted to mean that “things are what they say they are,” I’m not so sure that’s the case when it comes to the term “garden show.”

A garden show is a garden show is not just a garden show when it’s in Paris.

This year, the Paris garden show known as Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries staged its magic in the Tuileries Garden—a stunning display of beauty (superbe, as the French say) and fertile ground for creative ideas in urban gardening.

Can’t Go Out? Go Up!—The Beauty of Vertical Gardens

I bought my ticket to beauty and was enchanted from the moment I saw wispy fabric waving in the wind.

Wall of roses at Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries, a Paris Expo featuring creative ideas in urban gardening. Image © Sheron Long

“L’Instant Grand-Siècle,” exhibit by Nicolas Gilsoul for Laurent-Perrier at Paris garden show
© Sheron Long

What was behind it? A vertical garden of roses—pink and mauve and white and red—created by landscape architect Nicolas Gilsoul for Champagne Laurent-Perrier, a participant in the annual event for the past nine years.

Wall of Roses at Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries, a Paris garden show featuring creative ideas in urban gardening. Image © Sheron Long

Just how big was that bouquet? 10,000 roses and over 15 feet tall!
© Sheron Long

OK, a rose is a rose is a rose, but when I saw 10,000 of them in a vertical garden three times my height, I had to elaborate: Oh-là-là!

Vertical gardens have been around at least since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in 600 BC. Today, however, they are a new and creative way to address issues in the urban environment.

Green, living urban walls bring to city dwellers the beauty and nature that has long been associated with health and well-being.
Vertical gardens play a role in controlling temperatures inside buildings.
Some vertical gardens are farms, growing food to feed the increasing urban population.

Vertical gardens are as varied as any landscape. See 39 more here.

Do Creative Ideas Change with the Times?

Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries, in partnership with the Louvre Museum, formerly the royal residence at the east end of the Tuileries Garden, began the annual event ten years ago.

Each year, the show addresses creative gardening ideas.

Sign honoring Le Notre to whom Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries dedicated its garden show that features creative ideas in urban gardening. Image © Sheron Long

This year’s event honored landscape architect André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) for his creative genius upon the 400th anniversary of his birth.

Le Nôtre was born into a family of gardeners to kings and was trained in the Tuileries Garden, which he modified between 1666 and 1672.

He is perhaps best known for creating the grand gardens at Versailles for Louis XIV.

Creative ideas often spring from need. Le Notre’s creative challenge was to “think big,” generating ideas that worked on a vast scale, whereas urban spaces today often demand creative ideas that work on a small scale.

Times change, and so do creative solutions.

Somehow, I was sure that Le Nôtre would approve of today’s artists, designers, and landscape architects who are working “small” and “up” to bring beauty to urban spaces.

Ugly Sidewalks? Dress Them Up with Dadagreen®

When I saw this gentleman dressed up as Le Nôtre in the Dadagreen® exhibit, I knew I would find creative ideas there.

Actor playing Le Notre at the 2013 Paris garden admiring the creative ideas in urban gardening in the Dadagreen exhibit. Image © Paule Kingleur

Bringing beauty to fences and grills along streets and bridges, by hospitals and schools, to your balcony—that’s the goal of Dadagreen®, innovative flower pots that combine two old ideas—saddlebags and container gardening—to create fertile ground for an urban garden.

Dadagreen® flower boxes straddling urban railings, a creative idea in urban gardening. Image © Paule Kingleur

Dadagreen®, the concept of Paule Kingleur, founder of Paris Label, consists of two saddlebags handmade of recycled tarp and decorated with eye-catching photographs. Filled with dirt, the innovative pots welcome flowers, greenery, and even vegetables for those who want to create a kitchen garden on their street.

The Dadagreen, a creative idea in urban gardening, is planted with zucchini. Image © Paule Kingleur

How Do Creative Ideas Sprout and Grow?

In Paule Kingleur’s case, one gray November day, she saw a colorful child’s bonnet with stripes perched atop a street pole, one of those ugly anti-parking barriers.

She noticed how the bonnet dressed up the sidewalk. Committed to an urban life, Paule also believes in the right of urban dwellers to connect with nature.

That’s when she had an “Oh, I see” moment, realizing that she could hang pretty containers, called Potogreens, on existing poles to create micro-gardens and beauty in urban spaces.

Many new ideas are born like this. And often, the first idea leads to another. Later, Paule created the larger Dadagreen® where bigger urban gardens can thrive.

Where will Paule’s ideas go next? All over the city. Not content with prettying up a static sidewalk space, Paule threw the Dadagreen® saddlebags on a bike to take beauty on the road! Now, that’s a creative idea that fits our times!

Bicycle with Dadagreen® flower boxes, a creative idea in urban gardening. Image © Sheron Long

At Jardins, Jardin Aux Tuileries 2013, the rose wall by Nicolas Gilsoul won the Prix Coup de Coeur (“Lovestruck” Award).

Paule Kingleur’s Dadagreen® won the Prix Innovation Cité Vert (Prize for Green City Innovation).

The name Dadagreen® is a combination of the English word “green,” denoting its green mission, and “dada,” a childish nickname for horse, reflecting its characteristic of a straddle (and a wink at the Dadaist-Surrealist movement).