Playing the Building by David Byrne

[RicodJour]

Just ran across this and wanted to share it.

From Wikipedia's article on David Byrne: In 2008, Byrne and his production team programmed the Battery Maritime Building, a 99-year-old ferry terminal in Manhattan, to play music. Essentially Byrne took the old New York City building, hooked the entire structure - pipes, heaters, pillars and all, electronically to an old pipe organ, and made a playable musical instrument of it, for a piece called "Playing the Building".

How cool is THAT?!

[Artemus]

It's a cool idea alright but I'd like to have heard him play something. Something recognizable - like Life During Wartime. Art

[Zz Yzx]

I was in Houston TX in 1985 when that French guy put on a laser light/music show using the city-scape as the projection screen. Imagine +1 million people with boom boxes all tuned to the same station, watching the lasers, listening to the music, toking fat ones, and carousing.

I had me a real good time.

-Zz

[Artemus]

Not as cool as I first thought. In these videos he says it is not for playing scales or songs. Just an artsy fartsy noise maker (my words).

?v=K6cvCafcPGQArt

[marc rosen]

Is this Phase Two of More Songs about Buildings and Food? Marc (who had a pleasant meeting with David Byrne back in 1979 or 80)

[RicodJour]

participate, right? It wasn't meant to be a concert performance. It was more about opening people up to listening to the sounds around them.

Go back and look at it again. One of the things I noticed was a couple of women pulling two kids' hands away from the keyboard so the women could show them how it was 'supposed' to be done. That's the exact opposite of what David Byrne would have wanted. It was meant to let people experience music in a non-musical playful setting.

R

[RicodJour]

R

[Steve Turner]

Are you talking about Jean Michel Jarre?

[Steve]

Jean-Michel Jarre... part of that concert was used on "Jean-Michel Jarre in Concert Lyon/Houston", Disques Dreyfus/Polydor 833170-2 (1987). Thanks for the reminder -- I'm crankin' it up now!

[Zz Yzx]

[Zz Yzx]

Although I got the year wrong (1986 vs. 1985). We'd been in Houston since 1982. Freinds from home (California) came out to watch the Giants vs. Astros on opening day. The laser concert was an afterthought, but the highlight of hte visit.

-Zz

[marc rosen]

Hey Rico, The secong album by the Talking Heads is titled "More Songs about Buildings and Food". I also thought I'd make my own Frank Zappa reference with the quip "Is this phase two.......?" (For those Lumpy Gravy/Money perusers)

If you want me to elaborate about meeting Byrne, I was working (volunteering) at a college radio station and one of the other DJs was a close friend of his so he was invited to hang out for an evening. Nice time, can't recall too much of what was said. Marc

[Robatoy]

Well, at least he wasn't Burning Down The House... this time..

[GROVER]

building faces. Watched it from Buffalo Bayou.

Joe G

[RicodJour]

David Byrne said that as a youth he was probably borderline Asperger's, and I think that ability to obsess about things, and the ability to create from that obsession, is what makes an artist and artist.

No problem - some of the best nights I ever had were a bit foggy afterward...and after some I was also pretty damned sore. ;)

R

[Warm Worm]

get the band to do a live performance with the audience in the middle of the room. :)

I may have mentioned on here quite a long time ago something about the idea of a band that moves around the room and the audience, maybe on foot or even on some kind of film "dolly-track", so that the music fluctuates and shifts in experience over time...

I bang on bus-stop windows and parts thereof sometimes when I get bored waiting for the bus. Large glass windows can have a nice bass sound when you bump them in the middle with the side of your fist, and the metal components can sound nice (metallic snare when coupled with the window's bass) when flicked with a finger-nail.

Someone mentioned Frank Zappa, and there's a bit of him on tv "playing a bike", which I've also done when I once happened upon Montreal's:

vid says 2007 and the time I was there was around the early 90's, so they're still keeping up the tradition.

Zappa:

[Father Haskell]

In the old Delta blues tradition of the "diddley bow," a one stringed lap slide guitar, several musicians have made instruments by stretching baling wire across houses.

[RicodJour]

Interesting. Were the wires attached to the walls and the walls acted as the drum skin?

R

[creative1986]

While walking today I thought of a large pipe, about 3' dia x 12' long, with identical 12" full range drivers mounted along the side of that pipe, evenly spaced apart, the far end of the pipe would be capped off so the sound would come out one end only. Then send a single identical signal to each of the drivers at the same time. Would the driver at the far end of the pipe have a lower sound then the driver mounted closest to the open end of the pipe? If so, would that then be a full range speaker?

What if, at the far end of the pipe, rather than a cap, a U was installed, then another length of pipe, kinda like a folded horn. Would this add volume?

Spring must be coming, I'm itching to make stuff.

[Father Haskell]

Yup. I'm thinking of replacing my doorbell with one.