Leif Brush and the Earth Philharmonic by Dave Helland NEW TIMES, December, 1974 Iowa City, Iowa--Someday Leif Brush will write a symphony, but now he is busy tuning a tree, perfecting the Insect Broadcasting System, and inventing other instruments to perform the symphony. The rough idea for his river harp is on paper: now he needs engineers to put his idea into blueprint form and roughly $500,000 to construct the instrument. His rain and draft monitors are perfected. These are all examples of what Brush calls terrain instruments, instruments played by the elements of nature. The music they make are the random, minute sounds of nature-water running down a tree, ants' footsteps, a leaf hiting a taut wire- electronically amplified and then recorded. Unlike his fellow professors at the University of Iowa's School of Art, who paint, sculpt or make prints in their indoor studios, Brush's studio is his yard and house. When the wind is strong, he monitors three steel stakes in the ground around a tree and several steel pins driven into the trunk, crotch, bark and limbs of the tree. By hooking one of the stakes or pins to a pre-amp, he can record the vibrations caused by wind buffeting the tree. Each is recorded separately, but his goal is to be able to hear them simultaneously. Soon, he'll be able to mix the recordings to bring out the most interesting sound taking place at any given moment. Five wires of different gauges strung between two trees serve as his cricket and cicada monitor. Insect noises cause the the wires to vibrate slightly, but when these vibrations are amplified electronically they can be recorded. While recording this monitor, he heard strange noises he couldn't account for until he noticed that ants were crawling across the wires of the monitor. Terrain Instruments, Eleanor Heartney, EAR Magazine Ra d i o V.8. N. 5, March 1884 ...The Terrain Instruments exist, like sculpture, in space, but mirror sound which is less familiar and less connotative than that of a violin or piano. Current sound works employ use of microprocessors. and the listener/viewer of my radio-performances is asked to use new ways of perceiving this traditional, and artistic, source, the natural environment. ...Despite the unconventional nature of Brush's almost totally non-visual are (there are plans to convert aural information into visual images), it is closely tied to traditional notions of the link between art and nature. He is a populist and probably the most revolutionary aspect of his works is his transfer of control of his art from the artist to its audience. ... http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/U%20O%20Iowa%20Faculty.pdf http://www.d.umn.edu/!lbrush/EAR1984.pdf http://www.sial.rmit.edu.au/Projects/City_Sounds+Tuning_of_the_World.php

teleSUONOhologram http://www.d.umn.edu/%7Elbrush/lbarchivesTELESUONOVISION.html http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/teleSUONOhologram.jpg http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/lbarchivesf4.html#anchor139283 teleSuonoQUAD http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/lbarchivesf4.html#anchor396507 Ear to the Ground http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/lbarchivesf4.html#anchor1182749 http://cadensa.bl.uk/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=PFv2b35C9H/WORKS-FILE/278660047/123