Walter Marchetti: Observation of the Movements of a Fly
A fly lands on a windowpane. It pauses for a few seconds before crawling across the surface. It stops again, and waits. It flies off the glass and drops down at another point. It crawls, pauses; crawls, waits. This routine continues from 7 in the morning until 8 at night… All the while, Walter Marchetti looks on, carefully documenting the insect’s movements.
It is easy to hear this drawing: to imagine the buzz of wings as the fly takes flight, and the faint, barely audible sound of it touching back down on the glass. Perhaps Marchetti saw the movement of the fly as a performance, or his drawing as a kind of musical score—an improvised song of buzzing and silences.
Find more of Marchetti’s graphic, musical and performance works, including alternative versions of this drawing, here.
