Floating Pianos

Sculpture design: Tim Vincent - Smith

Three upright pianos cut in half on an angle appear to be floating, or sinking, into the high street. The overall effect of the six halves apparently submerged by the rising wave of the road surface is playful and surprising. Like life-rafts on a rising sea the sculptures can be seen to reference climate change or as symbols of hope in adversity.

The following text is carved into the tops of the pianos:
“If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat ...makes a fortuitous life preserver. In accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem we are clinging to a great many piano tops.” R. Buckminster Fuller - Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, 1969