I recently checked it out four times over the course of about a week – not that I originally planned to go more than once, but I was so hyped after my first visit that I just kept coming back every time I was in the area, and each time staying much longer than I had planned. 

A couple stats of my own calculation: how many billboards can I see from this spot in a single glance? …85. How many corporate chain stores are adjacent to this small pedestrian island? …10. How many people stop to take videos or pictures or just to gawk, from directly on top of the work, in a given 15 minute period? …30-50.

How many people, in all four visits combined (about 2 hours total), realized that this piece exists?

…0

Max NeuhausMax Neuhaus' Times Square is to me, among many other things, a ballsy statement about information overload. Installed under a subway grate on the pedestrian island south of 46th street between 7th Ave. and Broadway in Manhattan, it ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from 1977-1992, and was reinstalled in May 2002. When I first visited, I purposefully avoided learning anything more about the work than simply how to find it, and ideally my suggestion to anyone who hasn't been there is to stop reading this now and go check it out for yourself first, as you will surely have your own impressions. 

What comes from underneath that grate could be described as a simple metallic drone, basically unchanging but extremely dynamic, especially if you move around the site. Max described it as "the after-ring of a large bell." Although the sound is clearly not normal street noise, it is also not unusual enough to cause the average passer-by to do a double-take. It's loud enough to be heard clearly (at times almost overwhelmingly so) if you know to listen for it, but if you don't, it's likely not loud enough to pull your focus from whatever might already have hold.

That last fact was what immediately blew my mind and also what makes for possibly the best people watching in all of New York – there doesn't seem to be a single person who happens upon this spot who's focus isn't already completely occupied, and it's endlessly fascinating to watch them notice everything but the work of art they are standing directly on top of. Tourists and locals alike are on phones, staring up at the billboards, taking pictures, hurrying past, selling tickets, distributing flyers. Times Square is a work of art that is content not to compete with the hundreds of things that are already grabbing at people's attention from every direction.

I'm sure I've also walked over the spot unknowingly dozens of times, but once I became aware of it's existence, I found the effect to be marvelous. The warm, richly harmonic texture (reminiscent of early electronic music) envelops me like a cocoon. It gives the whole surrounding panoramic monument of corporate advertising banality a strange, other-worldly glow. It has a calming effect that turns the volume of everything else around it down (no small feat) and switches my mind's technicolor photographs of the scene into monochromatic negatives.

It occurred to me how a great work of art can, instead of becoming obsolete or dated, seem to actually change meaning over time. Times Square in the 70s and 80s must have given the piece a much more sinister feel, a foreboding sense that one is observing creeping danger from within a protected shadow. Today, installed in a new context of whitewashed corporatism, it's just as powerful in its capacity to shine a black light on a person in a not-completely-accurate SpongeBob SquarePants costume or a perfectly photoshopped naked torso on a 50x-larger-than-life-sized billboard. 

Although the work is supported and maintained by the DIA Museum, it is completely unmarked at the site. Maybe part of the original motivation for leaving it unmarked comes from an anti-establishment mindset, but I think the anonymity of the piece also makes a wonderful and generous statement about the ownership of a work of art. Without any acknowledgement of himself at the site, Neuhaus is essentially giving artistic credit to anyone who may happen to discover it accidentally. Not only does that person "own" it in the sense of the work being public and free to visit at any time of day or night, but that person might even feel that she discovered something no one else knows about. In an era where being the first to "share" something on Facebook or Reddit or Tumblr imparts a superficial, shallow authorship of the item (usually without the permission of its actual creator), Neuhaus' gift to anyone lucky enough to discover his work without foreknowledge of its existence (by leaving his own artistic credit off the site) is wonderfully generous and way ahead of his time. 

Here's a cool video about the reinstallation in 2002 at Max's site (although I highly recommend seeing the work in person first if at all possible!): http://www.max-neuhaus.info/audio-video/

Check it out, and don't be afraid to listen close!

(photo from www.gromfin.net)

But, as people are always saying when you work really hard at something only to sort of quasi-fail at it: "the journey is the reward." So here's the link:

The Way We Name Music Now (OR: one percussionist's mission to uncover the true meaning of Aphex Twin Track titles).

At the all new www.alarmwillsound.com

I've been listening to Huey Lewis & the News non-stop since hearing that Steve Jobs passed away. More on that in a second.

I got the news the way I suspect many people around here did - on an exploding Twitter feed that was equally praising Steve Jobs as it was the Occupy Wall Street protests. Immediately I got to wondering: how can I reconcile the excitement and hope I feel about the rising anti-corporate protests with the desire to celebrate the life's work of one of the most powerful corporate figures of all time? It feels mutually exclusive, and as many are pointing out in the most tediously obvious possible way, isn't it hypocrisy if those people #occupywallstreet with their iPhones and Macbooks in tow?!

I actually totally don't know! And my point isn't to answer that question at all, but instead to crack out about my childhood while I wait for the crack brownies to come out of the oven. This is the bottom line for me: my childhood is inextricably tied up in the history of this huge, powerful corporation Steve Jobs created, and I'm sure that's a good thing.

In 1983 my family moved to Cupertino, California just a few blocks from 20525 Mariani Ave., which would later expand out to the famous "1 Infinite Loop" world headquarters of Apple Computer (you might recognize it from your iPhone's "Maps" application). Having worked at Apple already for 2 years, my dad was employee #2567. I was 4! I lived in Cupertino until I went away to college 13 years later.

Millions of people have a relationship with the Apple Computer that emerged when Steve Jobs returned in the late 90s, and it's obviously been since then that the world has been most affected by Steve's products and ideas. But there's one simple innovation that Jobs and Apple made during that earlier era that had a huge effect on me as kid, and on my family as well; the idea that a corporation could have a casual, relaxed environment that creates a family and fosters creativity. 

In a world where the Google-esque "playground" work environment is the norm for high-tech, it's hard to remember this wasn't always the case. Before Apple, the corporate office was often a place to be miserable and demoralized, not a place to be collaborative and creative. 

My mom wrote to me today describing the feeling:

Really devastated about the death of Steve Jobs. Just so sad to lose such an innovative brilliant mind and to think about what was yet to come. He had such an impact on our family, though indirect, in the opportunity Dad had to work there and really enjoy his job at Apple. It was the best place he ever worked. Like he used to say, "it was like Christmas everyday".

Sometimes, if my dad had something to take care of on the weekend, he would take me to work with him. I got to hang out in one of the main gathering areas of the building, and I remember that it always seemed as though there had just been some kind of huge bash - half eaten cake, streamers, balloons, confetti. Casually dressed adults strolled from place to place looking grown-up in an impossibly cool way. Add to that the full-sized arcade games that didn't even need quarters and it was like heaven. And in my mind, when my dad went off to work in the morning, he was going to this giant birthday party to eat cake and open presents all day long. 

Then, for my 6th birthday, I got my first bike! Ok, ALSO I got two tickets to go with my dad to the Apple convention "Bits & Bytes," where I wore a rad Jobs-ian red bow tie and stood on a box high enough to reach the keyboard of an Apple ][c so that I could demo "Print Shop" to conference attendees. I remember the point of this being to claim it was "so easy a child could do it" (which, as we know, is the opposite of the situation today), but I may have fabricated that whole thing in my mind after-the-fact. What is undeniable, though, is the amazing time I had with my dad, and how proud I was of him, and that it was the culture Jobs created that could make this happen. 

There were lots more of these experiences, too - from actual birthday parties to a couple years later when what felt like everyone in the entire world descended on the Apple campus for the launch of the Newton. 

The soundtrack of the time and place was Huey Lewis & the News (which you are hopefully rocking out to at this very moment): earnest party music with a lovable geeky nostalgia. This music snuck into my subconscious, where it still lives today as one of the most immediate ways to recall the more idyllic childhood moments.

As the company fell on it's tough post-Jobs/pre-Jobs era, my dad lost his job due to restructuring. Apple has still been the only computer I've ever used, and I spent much of my teenage years fighting the mac/pc flame wars that were a staple of the years where Apple was a complete mess. Dad defected for a bit (ahem) but has since returned, along with what seems like the whole rest of the world. Today he sent me this:

I'm not sure very many former Apple employees still have their badges. It was standard procedure, strictly enforced for the manager or HR rep to collect them when employees terminated. I know because I collected quite a few from my employees in my time, and they didn't want to give them up. I don't remember how I managed to dodge that requirement myself, but I do know that I desperately wanted to keep my badge. For one thing, the picture shows me at the happiest moment of my professional life--my first day at Apple.

There is not one bit of Leonardo DiCaprio, I promise!

To listen to the performance live, go HERE.

To get tickets and attend ("boarding" ends at 8:40 and 10:40 pm), go HERE.

T.1912
Thursday, April 14 @ 8:40 pm & 10:40 pm

The sinking of the Titanic on April 14, 1912, has continued to move and fascinate for generations. Artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster creates a site-specific staged audience experience in the museum’s rotunda, inspired by this historic event and wherein the audience plays a role. Gavin Bryars's The Sinking of the Titanic will be at the core of the installation, performed by The Wordless Music Orchestra. "Boarding" closes at 8:40 pm and 10:40 pm.

World Premier of Judd Greenstein's Shlomo
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 at 7:30 PM
Ecstatic Music Festival
Merkin Hall, NYC (Tickets and More Info)

World Premier of Sean Friar's Clunker Concerto
Friday, March 4th, 2011 at 7:30 PM
American Composers Orchestra, Playing it UNSafe
Zankel Hall, NYC (Tickets and More Info) 

超すごい : Music of Japan by NY and Tokyo Composers
Saturday, April 2nd, 2011 at 8 PM
World Premiers by Miura, Thompson
Works by Kitazume, Naito, Takemitsu, Muhly
Laguardia Performing Arts Center, Long Island City (Tickets and More Info)

Gavin Bryars' Sinking the Titanic
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
2 Departures: Boarding Closes at 8:40 and 10:40 PM 
Line C3 and Wordless Music Orchestra
The Guggenheim, NYC (Tickets and More Info)

And stay tuned this summer for Serving Size 4 Bunnies with Live puppetry at La Mama!

ALSO:

Now you can visit the ALL NEW WWW.LINEC3.COM featuring more super fun time with percussion! You know you love it.