.

HWY SONG consists of a circa 1920’s Stella acoustic guitar with a video monitor fitted into its’ sound hole. The monitor plays a silent cut-up loop of a stretch of highway as seen from a moving car, a subtle evocation of the American road movie, the ‘road song’, and the potent and persistent mythology of the guitar. Plenty of highway songs have been written, this is a visual ode to them all.

The video was shot with a toy Pixel camera and then tinted, edited and generally fukked with further. The piece is one of a number of 'modified instruments' I have been building of late.

It has been exhibited during my sound/installation show 'We are Everywhere and Nowhere, All at Once' at Studio 5 Beekman in NYC in May 1999, and also as part of a sound installation I made for the Copenhagen Museum of Contemporary Art's show entitled 'SSSHHHH...', in November 1999. In April 2000 it will be on display as part of the 'Sonic Boom' show at the Hayward Gallery in London's Royal Festival Hall.

Lee Ranaldo '00