The Adventures of JStar88 on The Blue Marble

Playing the Building Again

I’ve been thinking about the concept of “musical space” since I first went to David Byrne’s installation art exhibit Playing the Building at Färgfabriken two weeks ago. I didn’t write much about that experience in my original blog post, but it was something that made a very strong impression on me. The very concept of literally wiring a building for sound and letting the public play it was beyond me, a fresh idea so far out of the ordinary box that it has haunted and inspired me to think differently about many things.

I went there again today as I knew the exhibit closes tomorrow. I wanted to try some of the musical ideas that had been running through my head since I last sat down at the organ. To say the very least, the possibilities of this instrument are many and varied, and outside the scope of anything I’ve played before. How outside the scope? Well...

The organ keyboard’s keys are divided into three sections:

1. Winds: This section controls high-pressure hoses through which compressed air flows from the organ to a series of pipes and electrical conduits with holes drilled in them. This creates whistling sounds like those from giant 4-metre long flutes. The pitches are all microtones from non-standard scales and traditional melodies are impossible. No I-IV-V-I triad progressions...
2. Vibrations: This section is a set of electrical switches which activate oscillating motors mounted on various metal crossbeams around the building. The motors cause the beams to thrum ominously and deeply and range in pitch from low near-subsonics that you can feel in your kidneys to industrial jackhammer tones.
3. Striking: This section controls electrical pulses that trigger solenoids attached to hollow iron support beams around the building. The solenoids then cause a mechanical bell clapper to strike the beams like a ring on your left hand slapping a lamppost. As these beams were all made for the building's construction in 1889 when manufacturing standards were less consistent than today, their consistency and shape vary slightly and this similarly affects the pitch and resonance.

The organ itself is set near the middle of a large concrete and steel room that was built to be the floor of a munitions factory. That leaves you with plenty of space to walk around or sit and appreciate as others play the building. No matter where you are, the sound is several steps beyond the most sophisticated theoretical quadrasonic sound system.

The noise comes from everywhere, no matter where you are. It shakes the foundations and gnaws at various parts of your body. It makes you feel nauseous, happy, sad, disgusted and inspired. And that, I suppose, is what classifies this exhibit as art.

I sat for an hour and listened today before I approached the keyboard.

I was disgusted by the mashing of keys by people of all ages, as they played the building like they were playing a console video game and couldn’t find the right key combinations to take them to the next level. They concentrated on the most annoying, shrill, loud, cranium-splitting sounds and pawed them like automatons intent on the Earth’s destruction. It was just noise and wasted potential.

Some people had more sensitivity and creativity in their approach. While everyone first tried to figure out which keys controlled what sounds, these people were more interested in PLAYING and/or trying to make music than just making noise. It’s a tough instrument though, and after a few weeks some of the keys, wires and hoses have stopped working so the full dynamic range from my first visit was no longer intact. But people still tried, and looked around, amazed at the instrument they were inside and mastering. They were all little Philip Glasses and Arnold Schoenbergs creating asynchronous, atonal masterpieces that would cause the skull of an average listener of top-40 radio to implode.

It’s a different way of thinking about music. From both the performer’s perspective and the listener’s, being inside an instrument that resonates around you is a rare and potentially beautiful thing – particularly when the instrument is being used to create music as opposed to mere noise.

I thought a lot about the question: What is music? Just like Miriam and I used to discuss What is art?, I wondered about where that line of distinction was for me, personally. As people took turns sitting before the organ, they had the same opportunities and possibilities to create as any before or after them. But what they created was, subjectively speaking, as diverse as moldy trash and budding beauty ever get. Does it all qualify as music, and some just gets sorted into the bad music category, or can I actually make a distinction between noise and music?

I think now, after thinking earlier, that it is all music, and all music is art, and that through my own set of filters I can qualify what I audibly experience as good, bad or whatever. And I do, and I will.

I did make my way to the keyboard after a while, and enjoyed myself quite thoroughly. I used my right hand to play a rhythm on the striking beams, while trying to play a sombre counterpoint melody on the wind pipes and motorized beams. I wanted to try playing the space as well as the sounds, and tried some key pairings that were spatial in order to move perspective and depth as well as relevance and tone. It was lots of fun, fascinating to experiment with, rather soothing, and allowed me to say what I needed to say at the place and time I needed to say it.

But was what I created art, and was what I played music? Well, that’s up to you to say. But I can definitely say that David Byrne has my respect and admiration for creating this instrument and this experience, and for letting me play the building.

posted by jstar88 @ 9:18 PM