HIGGSTRUMENTS
-A Selection of My Machines, Installations and Contraptions for Multisensory Music Making
THE JOCULATOR (2009)
An electo acoustic vehicle that I power by pedalling, allowing me to be a compose, record and perform music on the move.
DOOR (2011)
A musical door which two musicians trundle around a city, stopping periodically to perform a composition entitled DOOR.
THE EVOLVAPHONE (2009)
A booth which two people enter, input their initials with telegraph keys, and hear and feel a composition generated according to the laws of natural selection from the morse code equivalent of their initials.
THE JIMMY RIG SLIP JIG (2011)
4 musician builders assemble this instrument as a musical act and subsequently perform a composition upon it by the same name.
THE MACHINE OF SONG (2011)
An instrument and composition I created with students from St Mary’s School for Deaf Girls based on their unique perspective on music.
THE ELECTRO ACOUSTIC EXCHANGE (2007)
A site-specific installation created by for the Project Arts Centre, revealed on 24 July, 2007.
The Lost and Found Sound Assembly (2013)
A musical composition and instrument I created with students from St Mary’s School for Deaf Girls from recycled materials in 2013. The composition is unique in that the assembly of the instrument is part of the composition itself.
Bed of Macbeth (2008)
Bed of Macbeth, which was installed in the Project Arts Centre, Dublin in October, 2008, involved a bed with a movie screen on its canopy, vibrating speakers in its mattress and audio speakers all around. One or two spectators could place a coin into a slot and lie in the bed to watch one of five films I composed based on the bedchamber relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. The project was funded by the Arts Council of Ireland.
Music for Modern Animals (2009)
3 sculptures on Airfield Estate which functioned as hand-cranked music players. Each sculpture housed a separate part of a three movement composition for telegraph ensemble and livestock orchestra. The sounds used in the piece were recorded around Airfield Estate and used morse code performed by the composer.
The Syntonic Street Experiment (2013)
In this opera, 7 musicians move around the city with an bizarre array of especially designed instruments on wheels: an over tone wheel generator, a pump organ, a baritone guitar and a tuned percussion battery. 4 singers play the over tone wheel generator, weaving a rich harmonic fabric with threads from two different tuning premises: equal temperament and the harmonic series.
FATIMATPHONE (2006)
Only days before the demolition of the last blocks of the old Fatima Mansions, I installed and performed on the Fatimaphone: a hammer dulcimer I fashioned to model the flat complexes with built-in electronics, connected to 4 speakers made out of steel rubbish bins to be hoisted on pulleys to the top balconies of the flats as the audience moved about the courtyard.