Edgardo Rudnitzky was born in Buenos Aires in 1965. He is a composer, a sound artist and a percussionist. He has been involved in theatre as sound designer for theatrical settings, contemporary dance and also for films. Among his various collaborations with artists, we would like to point the one with the Argentinian artist Jorge Macchi out.
As Macchi recently told us, they first met on stage – it was the late ‘90s – and Edgardo gave him that sense of collaboration, typical in theatrical production, that was completely out of his mind at that time. Ever since they have been worked together and always kept the visual and the sound components of a work being complementary and at the same level: just to mention some of their collaborations, in 2004 they worked on an unconventional Buenos Aires tourist guide, in 2005 they were commissioned to represent Argentina at the Venice Biennale, in 2008 they were invited to work in New Orleans for Prospect 1.
Edgardo Rudnitzky & Jorge Macchi, Little Music, 2008, pattino per Prospect 1, New Orleans.
Little Music is a collaboration with Jorge Macchi, it was produced in the occasion of the Biennial Prospect 1 in New Orleans. The piece is located near the City Park, in the Bayou Saint John, a channel that used to connect Mississipi river with Pontchatrian lake. Macchi and Rudnitzky have created five paddle boats that people can ride, drawing from the tradition of paddle boats in City Park before Hurricane Katrina. Every boat has the six paddle wheel associated to a giant kalimba installed on the back of the seat. The paddles have teeth that activate the metal keys of the instrument like in a musical box. In this way the people produce music when pedaling. The sounds coming from the boats mix at random but harmonically controled, due to the use of a pentatonic scale.?The name kalimba is a Bantu word which means little music.
What you can listen here is a kind of documentary version Rudnitzky did for Radio Papesse, mixing the sounds of the paddle boats out of the water with field recordings made during Prospect 1 and the sound of some video footage.