Self-playing drum machine of one hundred drums.

SUPERDRUM consists of more than one hundred second-hand drums, donated by the public or sourced through online marketplaces, thrift stores, and attics. No two drums are the same; each carries its own history in its shape, dents, discoloration, and old band logos.

With this collection, Touki Delphine built, in collaboration with Dutch music and theatre company Veenfabriek, a self-playing drum machine in which twigs from forests and roadsides strike the drums, driven by solenoids (the same mechanism used in car doors). Each drum is fitted with light and connected to a system that can control every drum individually.

The drum is a primal instrument. For thousands of years, people have used rhythm to communicate: across long distances, with their surroundings, and with spiritual worlds.

With SUPERDRUM, Touki Delphine taps into this primal force and has composed new music, specially written for the possibilities and limitations of this machine. Their work blends groundbreaking techniques from the modern avant-garde with world music, playing with sound masses: layers of sound that form a dense, living texture. It sounds like Steve Reich interrupted by a swarm of bees, Caroline Shaw writing for A Roomful of Drums, or Edgard Varèse interpreted by a hundred woodpeckers.

The unique combination of sound and light in SUPERDRUM creates a mesmerizing performance. The spectator is left under a blanket of rhythm with a refreshed sense of time, and the feeling that they’ve taken part in a ritual communication with another world, whether that be of the digital or the spiritual form. Or likely a little of both.

Credits
Installation | John van Oostrum
Composition and music | Bo Koek, Rik Elstgeest and Chris Doyle
SUPERDRUM was created in collaboration with Veenfabriek

“This magnificent artwork by Touki Delphine evokes an unknown organism, housing a hundred unique heartbeats that together create ominous and wondrous rhythms”
de Volkskrant

“A stunning installation: a large, intriguing field of a hundred different drums.”
“Without giving too much away, the finale (composition/music: Bo Koek, Rik Elstgeest, and Chris Doyle) is magnificent.”
Theaterkrant