There's an amazing art piece in Manhattan right now that allows anyone, free of charge, to "play" a building like you'd play a musical instrument. It's an audio installation conceived by David Byrne of Talking Heads and David Byrne fame and carried out by Creative Time and the City of New York. I happened to be in Manhattan recently and I got a chance to step up and play the building for myself. The experience was humbling to say the least. I found that my total lack of knowledge about the keys of a piano translated nicely to a poorly conducted symphony of random sounds. But more than that, I realized the limits of my own preconceptions of music. When I first enter the Battery Maritime Building just adjacent to Battery Park, I'm sent through an antechamber where I sign a release form absolving the city of any responsibility should the house actually be brought down by someone's playing. I hear the random clacking and humming of the building being played in the distance and as I walk up the stairs to the main room, the sounds grow in volume. As I can better discern what is going on, I start to understand that playing the building is not so much musical in the conventional sense. But it may just be as musical as a building can be. Entering the main room where the organ sits, the first thing I notice is how good the whole piece looks. It's not at all what I expected. Simple arcing lines cut through and bring life to a dirty, brown un ...
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There's an amazing art piece in Manhattan right now that allows anyone, free of charge, to "play" a building like you'd play a musical instrument. It's an audio installation conceived by David Byrne of Talking Heads and David Byrne fame and carried out by Creative Time and the City of New York. I happened to be in Manhattan recently and I got a chance to step up and play the building for myself. The experience was humbling to say the least. I found that my total lack of knowledge about the keys of a piano translated nicely to a poorly conducted symphony of random sounds. But more than that, I realized the limits of my own preconceptions of music. When I first enter the Battery Maritime Building just adjacent to Battery Park, I'm sent through an antechamber where I sign a release form absolving the city of any responsibility should the house actually be brought down by someone's playing. I hear the random clacking and humming of the building being played in the distance and as I walk up the stairs to the main room, the sounds grow in volume. As I can better discern what is going on, I start to understand that playing the building is not so much musical in the conventional sense. But it may just be as musical as a building can be. Entering the main room where the organ sits, the first thing I notice is how good the whole piece looks. It's not at all what I expected. Simple arcing lines cut through and bring life to a dirty, brown un ...