Documentary about Petr Válek highlights "the beauty of noise"

I'm fascinated by artist and musician Petr Válek, also known as "the VAPE." Previously, here at Boing Boing, Popkin highlighted one of his musical contraptions created with a spoon, metal bowl, marbles, sticks, rocks, and more. I recently came across a short documentary about Válek and wanted to share it, as it offers a fascinating glimpse into a truly unique artistic genius.

A bio of Válek on the Vašulka Kitchen Brno Center for New Media Art's website states that Válek, who lives in Czech Republic, trained as a stonemason and worked as a nurse in a home for the elderly. He's been passionate about creating art since childhood, and has engaged in painting, drawing, illustrating, and music. He now builds "mechanical and electro-mechanical musical instruments or self-propelled kinetic objects, constructed from found household items." The bio describes some of these objects and what Válek creates from them:

Crumpled pots spin on prepared turntables, and pieces of boards, colanders, slicers, wires and springs are assembled with electronic devices. At the same time, Válek's musical set is always also a visual installation: he sometimes paints the instruments or incorporates "decorative" elements into them. Some objects lose their musical functionality completely, turning into bizarre, injured toys, generating vague and chaotic unrest. Even then, they do not cease to be an integral part of the sound performance . . . Lately, he has been creating mobiles – kinetic sound apparatuses composed of small "disturbances," objects animated by small engines which move inside resonant vessels, or just across the table or floor, and make stochastic noise by hitting walls or crashing into each other.

The documentary about Válek was directed by Marek Mrkvička and is entitled "Amplified Silence." Mrkvička provides this overview of the documentary:

A portrait of the artist Petr Válek that highlights the beauty of noise through his electrified constructions as well as everyday objects. The amplified sensitivity to various sounds inevitably leads to an intense experience of silence, of which noise is an integral part.

In the documentary, you can see Válek performing as what Vašulka Kitchen Brno calls "Der Marebrechst," which they explain is a kind of "bizarre noise musician and crazy inventor, regularly publishing short 'tutorial' videos recorded in his home studio, or in nature on Youtube or more recently on Facebook." In the documentary Válek excitedly demonstrates his clashing, fighting musical 'robots' made out of trash, and marvels at the "beautiful sound" created by dropping metal plates onto his wooden floor.

Vašulka Kitchen Brno provides some insight into Válek's philosophy of art and music:

Válek approaches sound from the perspective of the visual image, and image and sound are increasingly intertwined in his idiosyncratic poetics. As a musician, he wasn't satisfied with conventional instruments and devices, and transformed their form and function according to his own ideas. At first, for example, by repainting the surface, but he later interferes with their construction, mastering a peculiar style of hardware hacking and circuit bending which always reveals the inverse side of objects, showing the insides of devices and connecting their interfaces.

In the documentary, Válek provides a great example of this kind of meaning reversal when he reverently discusses building and playing a synthesizer with creaky legs that produces silence. He explains: "I tried to make a synthesizer, but I don't know how the components work, so I built a dummy synthesizer at least. But then I realized it actually works. It produces silence." One person commenting on the documentary on YouTube wrote about this quote, stating "This is… beautiful. I don't know why but this strikes something deep within me." Indeed, Válek resonates strongly with many of his fans. Another wrote, "I love his art so much. He makes dirt sing."

I find Válek's art and music beautiful, haunting, and deeply disruptive, in the best way. If you don't know him, go check out his work and the documentary, I think you'll be intrigued. And see more of Petr Válek's work on his YouTube or Instagram.