HERE TO HEAR

Talking Heads - The Big Country



David Byrne and Creative Time present Playing The Building.

"Playing the Building, a 9,000-square-foot, interactive, site-specific installation by David Byrne, will transform the interior of the landmark Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan into a massive sound sculpture that all visitors are invited to sit and “play.” Byrne’s project will consist of a retrofitted antique organ placed in the center of the building’s cavernous second-floor gallery that will control a series of devices attached to its structural features—metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes. These machines will vibrate, strike, and blow across the building elements, triggering unique harmonics and producing finely tuned sounds. As Byrne explains, it is an elaborate system for “activating the sound-producing qualities that are inherent in all materials.”

Byrne's site.
Creative Time Press PDF.

The piece opens to the public May 31 and runs until August 10.

I couldn't help but be reminded of Tim Hawkinson's Uberorgan. I witnessed the enormous, industrial internal organ pipe organ while visiting the Getty Museum. Hawkinson's ridiculous huge and wonderful organ ran off a script like a player piano. Byrne's notion of visitors actually manipulating the monstrous, cavernous sounds is a fun twist on gigantic installation as participatory sound piece.
Read more about Uberorgan.


The giant noise bagpipe bladders fill the room.


Uberorgan's sheet music.