Music and noise are different things.  The Christian Marclay exhibit at the Whitney Museum explored that.  The sounds of ear piercing screeches and dripping water were both heard throughout the room.  Walking in and hearing the sounds of something unfamiliar as someone who dropping a glass becomes familiar.  This whole exhibit was about seeing sounds and interactive art.  A wall with music staffs that could be drawn upon in any which way one feels like.  Interactive art is what this is, most museums won’t let any one touch a thing but yet now we can draw on the wall.

Musical notes were all over the room in one part.  With words like “kaboom” and “boing” plastered on comic book strips.  Words like these are seen but translated in to our head as a sound.  In a way its word association.  The notes that were dripped over t-shirts, shoes, and even toilet paper gripped one from the time they saw it.   The different ways musical notes were all around us and we never notice.  How on a sweet and low packet there is a musical note right there but we would never realize.  Music is all around us just waiting to grip us like a spider web.

Black and white clips that would have the occasional scribble of color drawn on it that consumed your attention to try and figure out what all the clips meant and how they were intertwined with one another.  Then you have the Eureka I got it moment.  I know what this all means.  How sounds are coming from the dark and yet one doesn’t know how to interrupt it but its right in your face the whole time.

Once the performance started I didn’t know how to take it.  The rock and roll feel accompanied by outer space type of sound.  It was as if aliens and humans trying to communicate but just weren’t getting there.  Whimsical instruments that made you see what was being played while it happened.  The guitarist was well endowed in to what she was doing and even in the high tone or fast pace the sounds flowing through the speakers became she stayed focus.  It was music that would drive you crazy but you had to listen to see what happened next.  It left you drained and confused.  It put you in an imaginary world filled with sounds of the start of a rock band.  It was music against sound.  The music was played on the guitar while the sound was played through a laptop.  The difference between music and noise is embedded in to you and you begin to realize the differences.  This was an all around great experience that could quite possibly change your view of music.

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Check out a mini-documentary on turntable sound pioneer Christian Marclay: