jürgen fauth’s muckworld

(more photos)

David Byrne’s installation transforms the Battery Maritime Building into a giant musical instrument, but the mysterious noises that emanate from all corners of the delightfully dilapidated industrial space have more in common with a late-80s Grateful Dead mid-set midi-freakout than whatever usually goes by “music.” Waiting and sweating in line for my turn at the tubed-up, souped-up organ, I decided that I’d blow all the other dilettantes away by laying down some serious maritime funk — this building needed a groove, and I was the man to do it!

But once I got my fingers on the keys, which trigger sound events through “wind, vibration, striking,” it became clear why everybody plays the building in exactly the same languidly tripped-out way: varying response times from button-push to noise don’t allow for a rhythm to emerge. Good-bye, funk! The lag undercuts any sense of control, and with the next eager punter breathing down your neck, there isn’t time to figure out how to use the instrument’s constraints to its advantage. The ferry terminal’s temporary transformation may be successful, but the title of the piece is fraudulent: in Lower Manhattan, the building plays you! Next time, can we skip “Space” and set up a giant industrial drum circle instead?

• Playing the Building at DavidByrne.com
• Justin Davidson in New York Magazine
• Video on BoingBoing and on YouTube

Cai Guo-Qiang at the Guggenheim
Elizabeth Cooper at Thrust Projects
St. Anthony of Giovinazzo Feast on Mulberry Street

Take your time: Olafur Eliasson is currently at MOMA and P.S.1. More Art with Strangers.

OK, so Matisyahu covered the Flaming Lips, Rose Hill Drive and Leslie West raged Mountain’s Mississippi Queen, Sheryl Jones and Booker T did Born Under a Bad Sign (”and that’s fine”), that “smokeshow” Grace Potter got Warren Haynes to take her to the river, Big Head Todd and Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook joined Tea Leaf Green for Pulling Mussles, Chevy Chase is buddies with jamclown Keller Williams, Joan Osborne belted Come Together, Stanton Moore dueled Doug E Fresh, and Page McConnell had the balls to lead jazz heavyweights Nicholas Payton, Christian McBride, James Carter, and Roy Hanes through two Phish songs.

Not too shabby, but that’s to be expected from the Jammys, Relix Magazine’s annual Theater at Madison Square Garden get-together that combines surprise collaborations with pleasant scene fluffing. Also, awards.

The only award that really mattered on Wednesday night, though, was Phish’s Lifetime Achievement Jammy (it’s fun to say!) because it was supposed to lure Trey, Mike, Jon, and Page out of rehab, seclusion, or wherever else they’ve been hiding since the 2004 breakup. The rumor mill had been churning hard, and it sort of worked: all four members showed up, sharing the stage for the first time since Coventry — but they didn’t play together.

Instead, Fishman made a joke, Page was sincere, Gordo wore purple pants, and Trey gave one of those heartfelt, halting speeches that have brought many a Phish show to a screeching stop — except this time he sounded more humble, and more final, than ever: “It was an honor to watch you all dance.”

Then they walked off, and it would have been terribly depressing if Trey hadn’t just finished playing with deliciously cheesy yet surprisingly tight Beatles cover band The Fab Faux. Phish or no Phish, sick or sober, Big Red can still — what’s the technical term? — melt faces. Here’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

More on the Jammys:

• Full setlist at Hidden Track
• Photos at reax
• Relix
• Runaway Dinosaur
• Burlington Free Press

Another herky-jerky time-lapse experiment, this time assembled from about 500 still photos I took on a walk through Astoria. Vimeo’s video compression adds an additional level of strangeness that makes this almost worth watching.

Forty earth years have passed since the Star Child first floated into view at the mind blowing climax of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and to celebrate the anniversary of a movie full of birthdays, birth metaphors, and planet-sized foetuses, the Tribeca Film Festival put on a special screening followed by an extraordinary panel consisting of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, screenwriter Ann Druyan, artificial intelligence expert Marvin Minsky, and actor Matthew Modine. Continue reading on About.com….

I managed to film the first 20 minutes of the panel:

2001: A Space Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick, 1968. *****