RAINFOREST IV

Furrminator

vibration speaker, mattress, audio recording of a cat’s purr


2020
ZIL, Moscow





Project participants:
Vera Vishnevaya
Anastasia Koroleva
Evgeniya Panina
Katya Trubina
Ilya Martynov
Emma Baer
Andrey Sviridov
Antanas Yatsinevichus
Anna Leonova
Mikhail Marushkin
Ekaterina Selezneva
Larisa Yagodkina
Ellina Gennadievna
Anastasia Zarubina
Artem Tarkhanov
Roman Golovko
Elena Shaimanova
Anastasia Nestulya
Konstantin Shabalin
Zlata Umanova
Maria Karpovich
Anastasia Elizarieva
Sergey Kondryakov
Anton Popov
Polina Ryman
Ksenia Purpose
Anna Komarova
Roman Kutnov
Elizaveta Abyants
Igor Vyazanichev
Laboratory curators: Andrey Smirnov and Masha Molokova
As part of the Sound Laboratory at the Echoes Soundscape and Spatial Music Festival, artists, musicians, composers and engineers have reconstructed David Tudor’s Rainforest IV installation. The Tudor project is a classic of experimental music and includes the ability to choose any objects for a kind of sound «game». The installation is being reproduced for the first time in Russia. The current version of «Rainforest IV» assumes the relationship of each object with a personal space of its creator. Relocated to the exhibition hall, the objects form an installation, which is a kind of portal to parallel worlds associated with the personal spaces of the project participants, who are deprived of the possibility of physical presence and interaction.








My object in an installation called “Furrminator” is a mattress covered with faux fur. During the pandemic, I spent a lot of time with my friend's cat, so the idea of a large artificial analogue appeared. The vibrodynamics transmite the low frequency vibrations created by the cat's purring. The frequencies are transmitted to iron springs inside the mattress. Thus, the mattress has become a speaker. To hear it, you have to lie down and feel vibrations with your whole body. Purring is often attributed with healing properties. The frequency of sounds made by a cat ranges from 30 to 40 Hertz. It is thought to help strengthen bone tissue and calm the nervous system. I would also like to delve into the idea of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip Dick, where in the distant future any animal is of much greater value than the most advanced android. “Furrminator” clearly demonstrates the ideas of modern society. As we often select pleasant and useful properties from nature and replace living things with artificial ones, getting closer and closer to the events described in this novel.