Windsor Rock Wall
March 7 - 10th, 2012
Opening Night: Saturday March 10th, 7pm
(4 days only!)
"Can every Windsor musician and band fit on one sheet of paper? Many of them already have, but the sheet of paper is gargantuan."
Starting as a visual art experiment, Tom Lucier began asking his customers at Phog Lounge to add musicians and bands to a series of ever-growing sheets of paper located in the front entrance of the bar. The core concept was to take the final product and make it into a silkscreen poster. But it quickly expanded into a giant archive of local music history, recent and not-so-recent. The centre point, labeled "Windsor Music Tangle" was not supposed to be the spot where all bands and musicians stemmed. Bands were supposed to find a common band member from the bands already on the wall, and then branch out from there. It has now been termed the Windsor Rock Wall. The result is an overwhelming visual knot of snaking black lines connecting bands (written in red) and musicians (written in black). Bands only connect to musicians, and vice-versa. Bands don't connect to bands, and musicians don't connect to musicians.
The Windsor Rock Wall contains any bands that have played live shows...even if it was just one time, in front of a crowd. All genres of music are accepted, including cover bands, from any era. So far, rock has dominated, but pop, metal, screamo, electronic, folk, country, jazz, blues and more all have found their way onto the Wall. As long as the root of the band had/has members in Windsor/Essex, it's fair game. Solo musicians can also make it, but Lucier believes that they've played with a band for at least one show, and he'd rather tie them into the design that way, rather than a direct line from the centre.
"The collection of bands has been mistaken for a roadmap of some kind, and has been compared to a Windsor brain, with all of it's musical synapses. It's like a physical version of Facebook, for musicians...if it were visualized." states Lucier.
The Windsor Rock Wall has outgrown it's initial home, and will be transitioning to SB Contemporary Art gallery @1017 Church Street, where it can have dedicated attention and space to allow for musicians to add new content. Spending almost six months in the busy front entrance of Phog Lounge, it has been vandalized and tagged by people just looking to make their mark, although many of them aren't musicians.
"It's time to protect this thing," Lucier said. Sarah Beveridge, the owner of SB Contemporary Art agreed, "it was time to give this large work of art some breathing room in order to let it grow." It will stand in SB Contemporary Art gallery for four evenings. The first three nights (March 7-9 from the hours of 7pm to10pm) will be dedicated to welcoming anyone wanting to come in and add music information, and the Saturday night will host a night for everyone to just reminisce, have a drink, and enjoy the spectacle. Lucier will be on-hand with red and black markers and two dedicated ledgers (filled with all of the bands and musicians currently on the Rock Wall) each night. "It got so big, people stopped wanting to add to it because they don't have enough time to assess whether or not their band, or bandmate is already on it."
With the contents mapped out using a grid system like a map, it's going to be easy for people wanting to add information by simply looking in the alphabetized books and then charting from there. "I'd like it to be as inclusive and expansive as possible," Lucier said, "and who knows where we go after these four days go by when it's chock full of info." Lucier knows the next step is to plot the info online using archiving software of some kind, and possibly publishing a book, and hosting a website that can house the band info, their connections, and any media that the bands are willing to upload such as photos, videos, and songs. "We'd likely need funding to research if all of these are legit, if everyone's names are spelled correctly, and to untangle this unbelievable mass of criss-crossing lines if we want it to be done right," Lucier said.
Lucier is willing to take submissions via email, phoglounge@gmail.com, where he requests that musicians send the band name, and the names of each band member. "I'll add everyone to this wall as long as I receive the info before March 7th."
For more information: Tom Lucier can be reached at phoglounge@gmail.com and Sarah Beveridge can be reached via...
SB Contemporary Art
1017 Church Street
Windsor, ON N9A 4V3
sbeveridgeart@gmail.com
by Richard Rosenthal
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