Playing The Building

Playing the Building is a sound installation by artist David Byrne in which the infrastructure, the Battery Maritime Building in New York - is converted into a giant musical instrument.


Devices are attached to the building structure - to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes - and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.