Australian grumbles are something to sing about

By James Grubel

CANBERRA (Reuters Life!) - Fed up with your neighbor's cat always wandering into your yard, or sick of people who walk in groups and block the sidewalk? It might just be time to write a song and sing out your grumbles.

An Australian choir is turning complaints into lyrics as part of a new art exhibition in the nation's second largest city of Melbourne.

Known as the Choir of Complaints and inspired by a similar group in Finland, artists Geoff Lowe and Jacqueline Riva -- who work under the name "A Constructed World" -- have formed a singing group with plenty to get off their chests.

"The idea is that the complaint has a bit more go in it. People immediately know what they want to complain about," Lowe told Reuters on Friday.

"When people complain, it seems more interesting, more alive, than when they tell you what's good."

The choir is part of an exhibition titled "Increase Your Uncertainty" at Melbourne's Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. The exhibition aims confuse the barriers between producing and consuming art by allowing people to join the choir and to submit their grievances for consideration in song.

The artists called for people in Melbourne to send in their pet peeves, then collaborated with a composer to put the complaints to music.

The complaints and finished song included some universal gripes, including grumbles about uncomfortable bra straps, loud cell phone conversations, and lament that the best things in life are always the most expensive.