To Scale (10,000 things for Mark Tobey) is a public art sound installation in which voices and tones flow up and down the stairway of the busy Pike Place Market Hill Climb. The Hill Climb links Seattle’s iconic waterfront with the Pike Place Market and is located directly across from the Seattle Aquarium. To Scale takes its inspiration from Seattle artist Mark Tobey’s “white writing” paintings. Tobey began his career painting the teeming aspects of the material world, and slowly moved to a gestural language of white marks that were the traces of those objects. “He was a keen observer”, says Graydon of Tobey, “so keen that he began to see the sense with which an object engages the world far beyond its physical boundaries. And that is one thing we want listeners to feel with our work, a sense of their city as an active force that emanates from the basic things surrounding them, using sound.”

To Scale (10,000 things for Mark Tobey)

2014
7-channel sound installation
public art commission, city of Seattle



video documentation


To Scale (10,000 things for Mark Tobey) from Andy Graydon on Vimeo.