Horse Drawn Piano

Benita Carr + Bill Orisich with Evan Levy, Lance Haugen and additional musicians

In a nod to Castleberry’s past from red light district to Atlanta’s first horse-drawn trolley, a horse and rider pull a grand piano through the streets. Pieces of metal and rocks lying on the piano strings respond to the vibrations of the road, thus incorporating the feel of the street to create the music. A seated player responds musically with keyboard and rap vocals to the sounds coming from the piano. As the horse and piano come within hearing range, individual musicians stationed on street corners begin to interact and improvise with its sounds carrying the music down the streets.

About the Artist

Subverting cultural norms associated with femaleness has been the primary subject of Benita Carr’s work in photography and video. Known for producing projects for site-specific environments, her work transcends boundaries formally and conceptually. Her 1996 exhibit Strip reconstructed the female body and was hung in a former slaughterhouse. GRETCH, a 1999 series of a young transient woman was installed in a 48’ semi-trailer adjacent to Atlanta’s infamous Krog Street Tunnel. Selected works from her project The Mother Series was featured in the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center 2005 Biennial, The Huntsville Museum of Art 2005 Triennial, and The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in 2009.

Carr collaborates on many art projects with Bill Orisich, owner and president of Whoa Films, a video production house in Atlanta. Orisich is a director, dp, editor, sound and music designer for both commercial and personal video art projects. After informally playing bass and electric guitar for decades, he formed the eclectic jazz and rap band Strike the Midget in 2012.