If Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata was a cocktail,
what would it taste like?
Oscar Peterson’s “Tenderly”?
Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls Of Fire”?
The painocktail exists in a world of contradictions and exceptions where music and liquor are in harmony with mood and nothing is as it seems. It conveys a capricious indulgence and a merging of luxuries. It has no purpose but pleasure, mystery and defamiliarization. It embraces the imaginative strangeness and beauty that resides beneath the surface of ordinary life.
The pianococktail is a piano that mixes drinks based on the combination of keys played. Each key combination corresponds to a different spirit, liquor, juice and garnishes that are mixed to make cocktails that are appropriate to the mood of the song played. The concept that music can be drank in addition to being heard is not anything new. The Pianocktail was conceived in the middle of WWII by the writer Boris Vian. What better time than now, in the middle of an economic windfall, to propose to bring to life the imagined object of the pianocktial and indulge in a merging of luxuries?
Boris Vian in his novel “Lecume des Jours” (Froth on the Daydream) 1947 describes such a piano. But Boris only dreamed about the piano since the technical requirements to build it, where very obscure and very complex at the time. Its only till recently that technology has become available in a way that anyone can build such a machine, with the right tools and a little patience.
In 2006, G’raldine Schenkel created her version of the Pianocktail. Although very entertaining, it is missing the complexity needed to allow a user to create any drink the imagination may manage to conceive.
Florica Vlad and I decided to create an instrument that can mix liquids in a manner that will inspire expression in new unintended ways. The Pianocktail will be the product of Florica’s Thesis and my New Interfaces for Musical Expression or N.I.M.E. project.
The exiting part about this project being in N.I.M.E. is that I will be performing in front of a large audience at a public venue such as Exit Art which was the site for last year’s N.I.M.E. performance.
I can almost picture it now, a line of people waiting their turn to show their piano skills and get a mixed drink that is unique to the melody they played. What amazing and not so great drinks will be created!