David Byrne Turns Unused Space Into Interactive Art Project "Playing the Building"

"We're bringing democracy to lower Manhattan," joked David Byrne. He wasn't launching a revolutionary coup on Saturday morning; rather, he was introducing his latest multi-media project called "Playing the Building." With the help of Creative Time, Byrne turned the long-closed Battery Maritime Building on New York's southern tip and morphed it into a nine thousand square foot sound installation that features a gutted organ, a series of colorful tubes and a whole lot of ambient noise. Click above for Byne's explanation of his work and for a look at how the whole thing works.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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