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The Colossal, The Amazing CONTAINER MAN MUSIC EXPO

The CONTAINER MAN MUSIC EXPO (CM Expo) will premiere original compositions created by more than 20 musicians for CONTAINER MAN, a colossal and amazing combination of sculpture and mechanical musical instruments, installed in a 40 foot shipping container. This sound sculpture is housed in the specially built Red Box Performance Hall at THE QUARRY, the arts complex of Contemporary Arts International (CAI) located at 68 Quarry Road in Acton MA. 

The CM Expo performances will take place on Saturday, November 2, 3 -9 p.m. and Sunday November 3, 2 – 5 p.m. Ticket prices are $20/day at the gate, and  $15/day online. For the event schedule and to purchase tickets in advance, visit www.quarryfestivals.org.

The CM Expo is co-produced and curated by Yin Peet, CAI’s Director, and Walter Wright,  co-founder and director of Gallery 119, a dynamic multi-disciplinary art center located in Lowell MA.  Wright is a musician and a well-known composer of electronic music.

The CM Expo is a juried competition in which notables in the experimental music field will select the best composition and two runner-ups. The awardees will be announced on Saturday, November 2, 2013. On Sunday, November 3, 2013, $1,000 will be presented to the composer/performer of the most outstanding composition, and $200 will be awarded for second and third place.

Musicians who participate in the CM Expo will compose and play original compositions created specifically for CONTAINER MAN. These include: Ryan Baker (Andover MA), Scott Barton (Worcester), Todd Brunel (Boston), Jen Gelineau (Greenfield MA), Aaron Fuleki (Ohio), deiX (Manchester NH), Alex Reed (Ithaca NY), Andrea Pensado (Salem), and David Russell (Greenfield MA).

CONTAINER MAN, a brightly colored kinetic sculpture, is made out of found industrial objects, includes 14 unique amplified musical instruments. In an instrument called “The Standing Heart” a stainless steel tub from a washing machine rotates and makes guttural sounds. In another,  “The Ribs,” an old typewriter becomes a keyboard generating piano-like sounds.

“My job,” says Wright, “is to find musicians willing to experiment and be open minded, not traditional or rigid.  I wanted musicians who would not impose their own ideas on CONTAINER MAN but find within the instrument what is important...There are a bunch of things you can do with it: you can play it with a bow, with wood, with plastics, with chopsticks—I haven’t tried steel wool yet, but you could play it with steel wool.” 

The story of CONTAINER MAN is an epic in itself. It was originally conceived in 1994 in Taiwan by sculptor and performance artist Yin Peet, and built by Hungarian sound sculptor Viktor Lois. It is a unique, monumental project, an electronic concert-hall-in-a-shipping-container, which Peet and Lois took on tour in Taiwan and East Europe and now, remarkably, has landed in Acton MA. Peet and Lois struggled for 7 years to build this project, overcoming funding crises and upheavals in international politics.

According to Yin Peet “CONTAINER MAN is a sound sculpture that reflects our modern, hi-tech mechanical, mobile, multi-sensual environment. It uses a shipping container as its skeleton and skin and parts from industrial machinery as its organs. Each organ is a musical instrument. As a whole it is an electronic orchestra.”

Peet conceived the shipping container as a human body in which the instruments are the organs and the musicians are the souls that bring it to life.  According to Peet, “The sounds have spiritual resonance. The Buddhist masters teach a way to liberate the soul from the burden of the body by chanting, so I chant. My heart is in CONTAINER MAN, it is the way I interpret the human body through sound.”

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ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ARTS INTERNATIONAL (CAI)

Contemporary Arts International (CAI), a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is located at The Quarry, a 12.9-acre site at 68 Quarry Road, Acton MA. The mission of CAI is to promote sculpture and experimental interdisciplinary art in a global context through symposia, international artist-in-residency programs, performance events, and educational outreach.

The CAI Co-founders Yin Peet and Viktor Lois, originally from Taiwan and Hungary, respectively, have extensive international experience in the art world. Yin Peet is a sculptor and performance artist, who earned an MFA in sculpture from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Viktor Lois is a kinetic sculptor and sound artist whose work is displayed in the permanent collection of the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, Hungary, and an entire building in the Mine Museum (Tatabanya Museum, Hungary).


For more information, visit the CAI website: www.contemporaryartsinternational.org


Contemporary Arts International


68 Quarry Road

Acton MA 01720

Email:  info@contemporaryartsinternational.org



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