Hear, New York: Sounding the Space
By Sarah Northmore
Several stories below Herald Square’s street level on the bustling N/R subway platform, is a green rectangular device. Hoisted between two I-beams, the box blends into its industrial surroundings, innocuous and inactive. A young man pauses by it and, with a nonchalant gesture, he lifts his cap and waves it past the device repeatedly. As though in response, with each flapping of his cap the device bursts into an orchestra of myriad sounds: crickets chirping, marimbas and flutes playing.
Across the rails on the uptown platform, two women take the man’s cue and approach a twin device, curiously situated on their platform. They also wave, and crickets and melodies whoosh around them. The women laugh together in a shy, disarming moment of self-exposure. Unusual behavior for New York City strangers.
Reach: New York, an interactive public art installation by Christopher Janney in conjunction with the MTA Arts for Transit/Creative Stations Program, has resided on this subway platform since 1996. Janney, a trained architect, an accomplished jazz musician, a prolific public artist and, currently, a visiting professor of architecture at Cooper Union, has introduced several of what he terms "urban musical instruments" into some of the most unlikely New York spaces.
Janney argues that playfulness, "a quality that touches on imagination and curiosity," is what he aims to channel and tool in order to combat "the frustration and anger that a lot of urban environments tend to bring out. There’s a quality of energy. In a NYC subway, you’ve got something to push against, and that interests me."
Janney’s urban musical instruments, rigged with motion sensors, audio equipment, and randomly changing sound scores, create a synesthetic experience for the unassuming passersby. And, as in the case of Reach, introduce organic sounds into an inorganic landscape. Strangers are urged to improvisationally "paint a space with sound" and act as mediator between the imposing, inorganic urban architecture and the ever reconfiguring social theater of the city. Janney believes his devices provide "a social foil for total strangers to interact with one another in a way brings out a playful nature in most of us." Janney’s works catalyze interaction and collaboration, between player and instrument, player and player. This playfulness punctuates the boundaries between motion and sound, personal expression and interpersonal communication.
"From jazz, I learned how to improvise–it’s a give and take, a call and response." Indeed, the improvisational elements of jazz musicianship correspond well to what actually unfolds at the site of an urban musical instrument: sounds fly, overlap; folks enjoy themselves and surprise one another as they become ad-hoc musicians; and, every so often, someone takes offense.
But Janney sees this as simply adding to the music of the landscape. These instruments, he explains, also act as a "social barometer in a space." Janney joyfully describes a grumpy businessman stomping up the Soundstair (one of Janney’s first traveling installations), where steps have been rigged with sound sensors; each grunting step became the hoot of an owl or bellow of a trombone.
As part of the 2004 New Sound, New York festival, Janney erected Sonic Forest ’04–a touring module composed of numerous sleek, 4’ — 8’ aluminum columns, or "trees"–in significantly differing environments, each for a two week shift: the polite and controlled plaza of Lincoln Center; the fast-paced, commercial, diversely-populated space of Union Square. The work shifts to symbiotically relate to its location; the musical landscape is created by the various populations playing the instrument. Janney insists that "the art is not about the place. Technology is just a tool. It’s about people. People carve paths to play in." As with Reach, Sonic Forest encourages the public to play, to break of out anonymity and create a spectacle wherein the surrounding structure suddenly responds to the people–collapsing divisions between imposing architectural gestures and pedestrian chaos, the permanent and the mutable.
In the end, do these complex dynamics engendered by traveling installations disappear with the vanishing of the installation? Even in Reach, a permanent piece, people’s paths must diverge with the arrival of their train. Touring installations travel on. In Union Square, only the faint outline of track marks remain where the sonic trees once stood.
Janney describes the last days of Soundstair. "When we were in Tulsa, we had taken it down around 3 o’clock. As we had it all packed in the truck, I turned around and kids were still running up and down the stairs, making the sounds. So, the shadow was still there. It’s an interesting effect when you come in and transform the character and quality of a space, and then you leave, and all that’s left is the shadow, a sonic memory. How long does the shadow remain, how does it fade?"
