by If you can sing and don’t do this you’re going to regret it. I’ve posted this before, but if you haven’t watched Eric Whitacre’s Ted Talk, watch it now. Then come back here.
Virtual Choir 3 is going to be set up as an art installation in addition to being released as an online video. Visitors will be able to walk among the singers. It immediately made me think of this powerful Gary Hill video installation called Tall Ships that was set up at the 1993 Whitney Biennial. You walked into a completely blackened room and on the walls were videos of people. As you walked up to them the people in the videos walked up to you. It was eerie and beautiful and I’ve never forgotten it. It was strangely intimate, even though you were interacting with a video and not the person.
The idea that this time those people will open their mouths and sing, it’s just one of those perfect ideas that makes you wonder why no one ever thought to do it before. When you’re a member of an audience, it’s wonderful, but you miss out on what it feels like to be in the middle of a song, to be right there in the thick of it, surrounded by all the harmonies that emerge. If I’m correctly envisioning what the final installation will be like, people will be able to walk in and around all the singers and pick up on different harmonies, different voices—it should be even more strangely but also more beautifully intimate. It will not only intensify your experience of the music but also of the singers.
Don’t miss your opportunity to be a part of this. You have until January 31st.
This used to be the strangest drugstore. It was always filled to the brim with stuff, but I’d go in there and they never seemed to have what I was looking for. It was like the 99 cent store of drug stores, a lot of cast off, remaindered items. I wonder if it was a front for something else.
