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Beep-Beep, Toot-Toot: David Byrne Plays the Whole Building




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New Yorkers would pay very good money to silence the daily New York Symphony, sounds composed and performed by the urban din of garbage trucks, car speakers, bus brakes, warped manhole covers, knocking radiators, people yelping down from high windows and the racket of numerous blaring television sets.

But just leave it up to the goofy David Byrne, an avant-garde artist and musician, to create a huge sound installation in New York City that makes such "music" on purpose, although many wouldn't call it music at all!!

David Byrne’s "Playing the Building" is a sound installation in which the infrastructure of New York's Maritime Building has been converted into a giant musical instrument: a gargantuan cast-iron orchestra.

Photographs and two videos of the "Playing the Building" sound installation are included.
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3 responses // Beep-Beep, Toot-Toot: David Byrne Plays the Whole Building

  • It looks as if he's constructed a gigantic version of our own central nervous system...except that all the wires hook up to the keyboard,, which looks whimsical in the stark enormous skeleton of the building. Is the organ the heart or the brain?
    24French
  • http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/beep-beep-t...
    Here's a video of the performance... pretty interesting.
    Justin_Gunn
  • Hi Justin,

    Actually, that particular video shows David Byrne's workers doing the final set-up and tuning of the installation. But you're right, it gives a good idea of what it sounds like, and it's quite interesting!!
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