Nice? music box...

Kay Sheridan really wasn’t that pleased with the little dinosaur music box that she had bought at Muji’s on her last visit to London. Thinking it was a pop-up toy, the ones you can make stand up or fall over by pressing a button under the box, she hadn’t expected it to play any music at all, and certainly not “Land of hope and glory”. And it has to be admitted, the rendition coming out of the box when the dinosaur was “pulled up with his roots” so to speak, also wasn’t very impressive.

No hope for the dinosaurs.

My response to her music box, since she didn’t like the dinosaur, and really didn’t like the tune either, was to kill them both. Instead of setting off the tune when pulled up from the ground, the dinosaur now fiddles along every time he is raised up in the hangman’s noose. Also, the tune I have damaged as much as I could, while still making sure it’s recognizable. I did this by grinding away some of the pegs in the music box, causing it to loose its notes in a John Cagey kind of way. I kept the sculptural language in tune with the original object since I find mass-produced wooden toys such a funny anachronism – more genuine than plastic, but more simulacrum than home made craft projects. Maybe Muji could also pick up on the design and start producing a hangman’ musical box, I wouldn’t mind. By the way, I really wonder how they select their music, and what “Land of Hope and Glory” has to do with dinosaurs in the first place?

Object no. 15