'Resonance'-in-Residence

Red microphone wires twist like spaghetti on the basement floor of Building D in Butler. A keyboard with long, thin metallic keys houses one end of the 56 cables, which travel across the floor and connect to yellow mallets, poised to strike marimba keys at a finger's touch.

"I enjoy people creating art with my art," Joshua Kirsch tells me as he screws in one of the more than 3,000 screws needed to install the "interactive musical instrument sculpture." After dropping a piece of wood onto a concrete floor one day and appreciating the note it struck, the artist set out to combine his love of percussion instruments with his knack for installation art. Three years and $10,000 later, "Sympathetic Resonances" was finally finished as part of Kirsch's senior thesis at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Seven months later, the piece is enjoying its second installation, here on the Princeton campus, in conjunction with VIS 392: Issues in Contemporary Art.

A required course for visual arts certificate students, Issues in Contemporary Art revolves around discussions of topical issues in the art world, illuminated by visits from guest artists and visits to museums and studios. Taught by installation artist Christian Tomaszewski, the course also includes a practical component in which students curate the work of an artist on campus. Most of the projects are installations of video performance, but "Sympathetic Resonance," which students spent four days assembling in the New Butler College gallery, is a working musical instrument.

The paired marimba keys and mallets are supported by six-foot-long wooden "ribs" that are "human size with a head and one big leg," Kirsch tells me. The layout of the ribs varies with each installation. Originally oriented in a compact semi-circle, the ribs are now connected to five black rectangular platforms on the floor, each supporting 11 ribs that form a lopsided V-shape. Kirsch's initial intention had been to install the marimba keys on the wall or ceiling, but he quickly learned just how protective Princeton is of its walls.

If you don't make it down to Butler by next Friday, you can still catch one of Kirsch's pieces on display in the Paul Robeson Center for the Arts on Witherspoon Street. Even better, you can head to joshuakirsch.com to watch a video of the Disney classic "Under the Sea" finally realized by the instrument that it was meant to be played with: on 56 marimba keys, separated and elevated by wooden beams, with mallets set off by a super-sensitive keyboard.

Other pieces created by outside artists and curated by students, as well as original student work in digital photography, sculpture, ceramics and installation, are on display this week in the Lucas Gallery at 185 Nassau St. until Dec. 17.