Beautiful City Noise

David Byrne's 'Playing the Building' is Beautiful City Noise

Upon entering the room, I saw a line of people waiting to play this old, hand-me-down church organ. In fact, there was nothing else in the room but that organ and a series of cables which were extended and suspended (in a painterly way) to connect to the architecture. I stood in line to play the building.

For more than three decades, David Byrne has surprised us by broadening the very definition of an artist. Whether it be groundbreaking music with the Talking Heads or solo projects, visual art, installations or, as in his latest project, combining them all by rigging up a building for sound.

Byrne’s new installation produced by Creative Time, “Playing The Building,” is located downtown in the Battery Maritime Building, which was built in 1909, closed in 1938 and hasn’t been open to the public for 50 years. It used to be the waiting room for a ferry terminal to Brooklyn, and it turns out it's a massive building with 9,000 square feet of reverberant space.

As I entered, I heard sounds that were both familiar and alien. Clanging assaults, otherworldly flute tones and a low-end rattling rumble that almost shook the building. This is city noise. The difference between this approach and, say, John Cage is that Byrne uses what might be construed as random sounds and places them under the player’s control.

-cont. @ nypress
Posted by Joe Bendik

Through Aug. 10, Battery Maritime Building, 10 South St.; Fri.-Sun. noon-6, free.