Arbrasson instrument blends sculpture and sound

A carved wood instrument that doubles as sculpture is producing sustained, birdsong-like tones through a technique that closely mirrors a friction-based instrument called the livika, once used in funeral rituals in Papua New Guinea and now considered to be extinguished.

The instrument was developed by French sculptor José Le Piez in the 1990s after he discovered that carved wooden slats could produce sustained tones when rubbed.

Daniel Fishkin, the American champion of arbrassons, demonstrated instruments he carved at a sakura-themed exhibition at the Romanian Cultural Institute on Friday and discussed their development in an interview with Urgent Matter. Fishkin apologized for not shaking hands, he had already coated them in rosin for the performance.

Fishkin’s music leaned experimental, including the use of Theremin fields, and largely lacked defined musical structure. The crowd thinned before the end of the performance. But the sound is unique and the instrument’s structure allows for tonal systems and compositional logic that make it viable for widespread use.

As objects, the arbrassons function as sculpture as well, with directional cuts carved into the wood forming patterns that read as abstract, modernist forms.

For Fishkin, the overlap between arbrassons and the livika of Papua New Guinea is less a colonial revival than a kind of parallel rediscovery: a musical system re-emerging without a continuous tradition, but carrying echoes of one.

He said livika were played in Malagan funerary ceremonies specific to the New Ireland Province of Papua New Guinea. There are now only about 50 known instruments existing in museums around the world, with very few recordings of it being played in its original context.

“As that culture has modernized, the instrument builders and the people playing at those funerals aren't really building those instruments anymore, so there's not an active tradition of it,” Fishkin said. “The field considers that instrument extinguished.”

Le Piez, who works as a tree surgeon for a French vineyard, discovered the same principle one day in 1996 while making furniture.

He rubbed the back of a piece of furniture he had carved that had slits in it and it made a sound. After further experimentation and the development of his arbrassons, Le Piez asked a nearby music conservatory if his instrument had any ancestors and learned of livikas.

“It is actually a decolonized instrument because he re-established the tradition from zero, and also pays reference to that tradition,” Fishkin said.

Fishkin first learned of the arbrasson in 2015 while working on his dissertation. His research, titled The Kerf of Sound, examined how the physical act of cutting material—particularly wood—shapes both musical instruments and the sounds they produce.

In 2023, Fishkin met a new collaborator, Etienne Rolin, during a residency in Budapest, who introduced him to Le Piez. After returning from France, Fishkin began making his own arbrassons.

On his website, Fishkin said he did not learn how to make them directly from Le Piez but signed an oath and 10-year moratorium with him, preventing him from selling arbrassons for profit until 2031.

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