David Byrne is turn­ing the Round­house The­atre in Lon­don into an instru­ment which the vis­i­tors them­selves may play. The indi­vid­ual deci­sions of each vis­i­tor to acti­vate which device, how many times, and in what rhythm are all amassed so that the music the build­ing plays is a result of all its par­tic­i­pa­tory inhab­i­tants. Whether or not there will be times of emer­gence, when some­thing deemed by the ear to be truly musi­cal occurs, remains to be seen. Hav­ing been to sev­eral exhibits where the gen­eral pub­lic is allowed to go nuts with sound­ing devices, I sus­pect the sonic atmos­phere will be spo­radic, unplanned, and unformed. Per­son­ally I’m more inter­ested in the sounds that the build­ing could pro­duce than the

Play­ing the Build­ing is a sound instal­la­tion in which the infra­struc­ture, the phys­i­cal plant of the build­ing, is con­verted into a giant musi­cal instrument.

Go read about the project on David Byrne’s site.

Boing­Bo­ingtv has a tour on youtube.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 9:46 am and is filed under Everything Else. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.