Made On Earth
Analog Wranglers
Brian Dewan may be a jack-of-all-trades,
but he’s clearly a master of many. An inventor
and builder, this Catskill, N. Y., resident is also
a performance artist, cartoonist, and multi-talented musician.
Dewan plays and sings along with semitraditional instruments like autoharps,
zithers, and accordions, making them seem
appropriate for everything from heavy
metal to folk songs. He also performs
with the cheerfully lunatic Raymond Scott
It’s impossible to precisely control, so the
“primates-in-charge” must guide the machine
to produce melodies, percussion, and innumerable unpredictable sound effects. Brian
explains, “It is the responsibility of each primate to encourage or restrain the instrument.”
Some simpler pieces are best experienced
in unison: a dozen Wall Gins, for instance,
were displayed in Brooklyn’s Pierogi Gallery,
configured to play simultaneously, creating an
eerie and enthralling ambient soundscape.
Orchestrette. (Raymond Scott composed
the music for numerous Warner Brothers
cartoons.)
In collaboration with cousin Leon Dewan,
Brian has created a series of instruments
called Dewanatrons that vary in complexity
from simple, elegant, wall-mounted interactive
sound sculptures such as their Melody Gins
All the musical instruments are “analog,
solid-state” works covered in knobs and dials,
full of oscillators and other physical sound
manipulation controllers, with beautifully
finished cases that bespeak Brian’s fine-furniture-building background. They are
artifacts and heirlooms of a Dewan-ized
version of the past.
Dual Primate Console Mark II, shown here.
Joshua Sarner
—Rose White
» Dewan’s Instruments: dewanatron.com
20 Make: makezine.com/27
