Ellen Fullman and her 100ft long stringed instrument
American composer Ellen Fullman has spent over four decades focusing on one project. The size of her instrument, aptly named the Long String Instrument, is what merits the time spent perfecting its sound. Made of stainless steel and bronze strings 100 feet long, Fullman stretches the strings across performance paces, plucking them with rosin-coated fingers as she walks through it. Listening to its sound has been compared to sitting inside a grand piano, the sound is so dense and rich, a relative chorus of earthy tones.
When Fullman performs live with the instrument, as she has in Athens, Paris, The Sydney Festival, and the London Contemporary Music Festival, the instrument dwarfs her. In a conversation with The Guardian, she said she feels as though she’s been “miniaturized” when playing it. “My whole body is a finger moving along a fretboard,” she says.
“Music is bigger than me: there are pitch relationships, shapes of notes beautiful beyond the level of human expression,” Fullman added. “I like that feeling of being a conduit. I don’t like egotistical thrashing. I like trying to give a gift.”
In 2015, her preoccupation with the bizarre instrument finally started to create some buzz. In experimental music circles, her work was well known, but it was receiving an arts grant that allowed her to take the instrument around the world.
This, of course, came with its own set of struggles. The rider on her website lays out the technicalities of transporting the instrument in incredible detail, which has to be down to Fullman’s experience as an electrician. Fullman found being a former electrician incredibly empowering as a former graphic designer and a musician.
“Being an electrician demystified some of the equipment I work with,” she explained. “It’s great to feel self-sufficient as an artist, having an idea of plumbing, how to construct walls, how the world works.” It particularly helps knowing putting together a performance is a five-day effort that involves many moving parts — day one, for instance, requires support structures to be made in the floors and walls – which takes around eight hours.
But Fullman is utilitarian and designed it to fit into her luggage. Not only that, but when deconstructed, the instrument that requires 1800lb sandbags to be positioned on each side of it weighs under the baggage limit. Still, it’s no picnic. “I’m not a huge person,” she sighs in her Guardian interview, “dragging this sack, it’s is not very freeing.”
In a moment of quiet reflection, Fullman admits that sometimes, when she plays, it feels as though something special is happening. At other times, though, it can seem like more of a failure. She recovers from this wavering moment by finding the humour in her work. “I like something funny to be in my work, funny and serious,” she reminds herself. “The Long String Instrument has a ridiculous aspect to it too – it’s absurd!”
