An old, disused piano on the castle terrace, with strings stretching out from it, played by the wind? This is one of the forms art takes thanks to the ooo Association’s programme, subtitled Between Air and Tension, which is being staged as part of the Trenčín 2026 project at Beckov Castle. Visitors to Beckov Castle will be able to enjoy this unconventional musical experience until at least 17 May.
This is already the third edition of the úúú series of sound events within Trenčín 2026. This time in collaboration with Canadian pianist and composer Gordon Monahan, who explores the possibilities of a piano that no longer serves as a musical instrument but has acquired several new functions. One of these is its transformation into a monumental wooden loudspeaker situated above the landscape near Nové Mesto nad Váhom.
“An old concert grand piano has found itself atop Beckov Castle. Placed on the castle terrace, it transforms from an instrument into a sound object. The piano is connected to the castle walls by dozens of metres of taut strings, which are vibrated by small motors playing compositions by Henry Cowell and Nepomuk Hummel, whilst the wind weaves through them, playing its own compositions,” describes Fero Király, the work’s curator. This creates a spontaneous acoustic composition in which piano music blends with atmospheric harmonies.
Gordon Monahan has been creating kinetic sound installations based on the principle of a piano placed outdoors, with long, taut strings activated by the wind, since the 1980s. In 1984, he presented his first world-renowned work of this kind – Long Aeolian Piano, situated in the countryside of New Brunswick, which today belongs to the canon of sound art.
The installation A Piano Listening to Itself was created in the early 2000s as the result of the artist’s long-term research in this field. It has been presented in various versions in Warsaw (Royal Castle), Brno (Villa Tugendhat), Mexico City and elsewhere. In the version presented in the úúú series as part of Trenčín 2026, Monahan deconstructs piano compositions by Henry Cowell and Frédéric Chopin. For the Trenčín version, he creates new compositions in which he responds to the Slovak context by reworking the work of Bratislava-born piano virtuoso and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837).
As a composer and sound artist, Gordon Monahan (1956) contrasts the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustic phenomena with elements of media technologies, the natural environment, architecture, popular culture and live performance.
The aim of the ooo Association is to present the audience with various perspectives on contemporary (or recent) musical and sound art through the interweaving of two series, psssst and úúú. The psssst series presents contemporary musical trends in the finest tradition of European music – from the search for new instruments to new sonorities and languages. The úúú series, by contrast, focuses more specifically on the critical strand of music and sound art, which is strongly intertwined with the challenges of the present day . By combining and interweaving, intertwining and interlacing psssst and úúú, we offer the audience a more comprehensive view of what sound means and how contemporary art approaches it.
The ooo collective creates a space for exploring the world through sound, contemporary music and intermedia art. The association’s artistic and curatorial approach focuses on projects that delve into the complex relationships between human and non-human beings, encompassing the field of acoustic ecology through the evolving series Sound Topographies, the intermedia environment JAMA, as well as the educational activities of New Ears. The ooo collective is based in Petržalka and is a member of the Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies. Its founding members are musician, educator and intermedia artist Fero Király, and dramaturg, cultural manager and performer Eva Vozárová.
