Alicia, B'More John and I went downtown on this beautiful Sunday to see David Byrne's art installation "Playing the Building". Alicia has been wanting to go all Summer, and as it turns out, when we showed up at the Battery Maritime Building at about 3:00pm it was, in fact, the last day of the exhibit (already held over for 2 extra weeks)! Whew! We JUST made it!
Admission was free, but everyone entering needed to sign some form/waiver... it was not entirly clear to me WHY, but we dutifuly signed it anyway, then proceeded up the stairwell to the exhibit.
Immediately upon seeing the dark, unmaintained and just plain SCARY stairwell, we knew why Waivers were necessary! I have seen horror movies that had better looking facilities.
At the top of the stairs, there was a loooooong line, so again, we just started to stand in it... we could see a giant room up ahead, and figured it was the line to get in. An aide came by and said, however, that this line was for PLAYING the musiic only... if you just wanted to SEE or HEAR the exhibit, to continue into the room. We ditched the line and went in, to a cavernously big industrial room with a single organ and a TON of wires coming out of it to each of the peripheral walls and heat vents and pipes and windows all around the room.
As the user played each key, a certain trigger would go off around the room, from window latches to steam pipes clanging to heating units moaning to life. Some sounds were percussive, clanging over and over while the user held dowen keys, while other sounds were long and deep and would sustain a tone as long as the user was pressing. the Instrument itself was impressive looking, with a deconstructed and kind of scary bunch of wires, looking more like something from H.R. Geiger than a musical instrument.
Unfortunately, as interesting and impressive as it all was, it really underwhelmed when actually EXPERIENCED, because each person sitting down and subjecting the room to their "music" really were just pushing random keys... often just over and over and over. Sure, it's fun for the 4-year-old, but it's not so fun for the audience having to LISTEN to the 4-year-old. I think I might have been more impressed had there been a control/tour guide or demonstration of some sort... SOME kind of order or system to the Chaos would have gone a long way to making it more of an experience for everyone in the room, not just the single person pushing a key.
All in all, I don't regret going, and WAS duly impressed by the concept and the great idea... but just walked out mostly being happy that I didn't PAY anything for it! That's not what you want to feel coming out of an art exhibit, especially from someone as artistically influential to me as David Byrne. (Nothing But) Flowers is one of my favorite videos of all-time, directed by M+Co. and in particular Emily Oberman, now principal of Number 17 in NYC, with whom I teach After Effects and Design in Motion at The Cooper Union.
And, lest you think that I stoped posting downloads for you ALREADY (after only 3 x posts!) here is an AWESOME MP3 of one of my favorite bands, Guster, covering "(Nothing But) Flowers" live.
Enjoy!
P.S. Just to reinforce how scary this place was (in a cool way, but still) here is a picture I snapped on the way OUT, where someone had made in a far off, abandoned, darkened corner, a single noose... yeesh. There were 4 artists/photographers taking picture of it along with me!
Download: Guster: (Nothing But) Flowers by Talking Heads
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