Sculpture For Your Ears

A few years ago, I wrote a post about an intriguing sculpture in the courtyard of Jefferson University a few blocks from my house called Ars Medendi.

At the time I wrote the post, there was a dearth of information on the Internet about the Ars Medeni cylinder or the screen, which is a shame. As I was reading the Philadelphia Inquirer this weekend, I was delighted t come upon a short mention of music composed specifically for these sculptures. by King Britt called Copper Speaks to Flesh, which you can download here.

As King Britt explains on his web site

“So I was commissioned by Bowerbird of Philadelphia to create a sonic re-interpretation of the Ars Medendi sculpture by Jim Sanborn. The sculpture is comprised of many medical terms cut into copper. The sound art can be listened thru your phone by QR Code while looking at it in person or download here. I wanted to incorporate the words in my piece, so I got Ursula Rucker to say sequences of words from the piece. I then processed them through pedals and such. I also asked two people that were standing around the piece, what it meant to them and put that at the end of my piece as a perfect ending….”