DANNY McCARTHY
Aka the Silence Becomes the Sound
By Lynda Cookson
Danny McCarthy, sound, visual and performance artist, turns the unexpected and neglected into recognition and care.
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During an artists’ residency in a cottage at Roches Point lighthouse, he found a baby grand piano dumped in a skip. The wood of the piano was rotten through but Danny carefully salvaged the strings, carried them back to his studio, and proceeded to make a “piano pipe”. He attached the strings around the perimeter of a large plastic pipe, which served as a resonator, and used a violin bow to coax the sounds out and to make his music. Danny took this instrument back to Roches Point, where he recorded his “Beyond the Point” CD. He wanted to go back to the place from which the piano strings were found, so that the conceptual cycle of the piece was completed. He never tried to find out who had thrown the piano into the skip, but did feel that as there were no pubs in the area, the piano must surely have been a central part of the community’s social life. The music created is haunting and ethereal, with eery sounds giving the impression of what it must sound like to live deep beneath the sea in a big rusty shipwreck. The sounds are mechanical and deep, as well as squeaky and rasping, never dull, and always communicative. Well worth a listen, and preferably in peace with your eyes shut.
