Tea four two
Arthur Clay · 2006
"Tea Four two" is a sound art work for an interactive teapot and teacup, which can be played by you. By lifting the lid of the teapot to various heights away from the teapot, you will be able to play a melody on the overtone scale, which is as old if not older, that tea itself. If you play for a just a little while, you will start to hear harmonies coming out of the teacup as your melody continues to radiate out of the teapot. The more you play, the faster or slower you play will all determine how the music you are making with the teapot lid will sound. To stop the music just place the teapot lid back down onto the teapot and let another person try it out. In this work, I wanted to work with the idea that not only music is a universal method of communication, but also having a cup of tea together. I recently read that people who drink tea together tend to talk together and talk more and in a time of international conflict between apparent differences in religion and politics that is slowly but surely leading to conflicts between cultures, drinking tea and talking together "sounds" good. Tea, like music, is to be found everywhere. However, unlike musical styles, which tend to stay put where they were found, tea has made its way from the farthest corners of the world onto the most ordinary of shelves in almost every store globally. Chinese, Russian, Indian, English, Indonesian teas etc. sit all together peacefully on those same shelves worldwide without fighting. This work concentrates on the fact they we have things which are different and we have things in common and by placing the what we have in common, like music and tea drinking, and placing those aspects which are different between our cultures, like religion, we may find ourselves drinking more tea together in harmony. Tea and music are multinational. Should not peace too? More Info (including Audio Demo) go to: http://homepage.mac.com/arthurclay/FileSharing25.pdf.