David Byrne Converts Building Into Giant Instrument

Byrne_building

As an architect of the legendary Talking Heads, David Byrne once offered up an album called More Songs About Buildings and Food. These days, he's tripping into architecture and turning a building into food for the ears. I think I just stopped making sense.

Let's start over. Starting May 31, visitors to New York's Battery Maritime Building will be able to take part in Byrne's interactive music installation called simply "Playing the Building." Like its self-explanatory title implies, the Battery will be fitted with devices that will allow visitors to make music off of the piping, pillars and more. It's an interesting way to view the structures we take for granted in everyday life. According to Byrne, it could be the future of music itself.

"I'd like to say that in a small way it turns consumers into creative producers," Byrne explains on his official site, "but that might be a bit too much to claim. However, even if one doesn't play the thing, it points toward a less mediated kind of cultural experience. It might be an experience in which one begins to reexamine one's surroundings and to realize that culture -- of which sound and music are parts -- doesn't always have to be produced by professionals and packaged in a consumable form.

"I'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments," he adds, "but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down. The imminent demise of the large record companies as gatekeepers of the world's popular music is a good thing, for the most part."

Interesting!  No word on whether using the lavatory will result in uninteded crescendos.  Heh. 

Show us a musical genius.

Oh gosh!  Just one?  I mean, there are so many to choose from.  Should I go all the way back to Hildegard of Bingen?  Mozart?  Nah!  I think I'll go contemporary and stick with my initial gut reaction to this query.  I'm not exactly a voracious concert-goer, but I've been to my share of rock and/or roll shows and without a doubt, hands-down, my favorite all-time concert was David Byrne at the Murat Theatre in September 2001.  It was the week after 9/11 and there was some question as to whether the concert would go on at all, but the show went on and he did not even mention the catastrophic events of the week before.  And, after a week of being barraged with footage of the attack on the World Trade Towers, the crowd seemed grateful for the chance to come together and forget about it for a few hours.  So, yes ... I love his music, I adore his eloquent and erudite observations on everything at www.davidbyrne.com, I admire his support and love of little-known, international musicians, I totally dig his passion for commuting via bicycle and, given his sublime and prolific catalogue of experimental and innovative music, I would say that David Byrne is a musical genius. 

The end.