Egg slicer used by electro-acoustic musician Hugh Davies
- Made:
- 1969 in unknown place
Egg Slicer used by musician Hugh Davies, c.1969.
Hugh Davies (1943-2005) was a British composer, musicologist, and inventor who is best known for his experimentations with electronic music. During the second half of the 1960s, Davies worked as an assistant to German electronic music composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, and between 1968 and 1971 he was part of The Music Improvisation Company. It was during his time at the Company that Davies started experimenting with new instrument-making, creating the Shozyg – an instrument housed inside an encyclopaedia covering subjects from Sho to Zyg. Following Shozyg, a word that Davies used to describe any instrument built inside an atypical container, came the egg-slicer. Davies fitted this egg slicer with a magnetic pickup that amplified the sound of its strings being plucked.
Many of the domestic-inspired instruments or ‘sound sculptures’ that Davies created were exhibited in art galleries, while he also dedicated himself to performing with other improvising artists of the electronic music scene. In 1968 he published the International Electronic Music Catalogue, the first comprehensive catalogue of electronic music around the world.
Details
- Category:
- Acoustics
- Object Number:
- 2007-133
- Materials:
- plastic (unidentified) and metal (unknown)
- Measurements:
-
overall (closed): 42 mm x 120 mm x 97 mm, .08 kg
overall (open): 97 mm x 120 mm x 130 mm,
- type:
- egg slicer
- credit:
- Pam Davies