Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Multiverse Techno Sidewalk




This weekend we were back in DC to hit the museums we didn't quite get around to on our birthday weekend. First we went to the Pompeii exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in the East Building (the funky triangular building). I want to thank malnurtured snay for tipping me off to that. We are going to Italy in a month and this was a nice sneak preview of what we hope to see while there.

Next up on our agenda was the Newseum, which I have been to but my wife hasn't. Rather that go back out into the cold I decided we should take the underground concourse over to the West Building. Between the two is a moving sidewalk that has a light display that looks like special effects from Stargate. The tunnel is filled with over 41,000 programmed LED lights and it's a real piece of art called 'Multiverse' by Leo Villareal and will be on display until November.

I had downloaded it to my computer and wondered what sort of music to set it to. I knew it had to be artsy and modern. I couldn't find my Kronos Quartet plays Phillip Glass album, but then I ran across a bunch of techno my son had left on the computer. The music I picked turned out to be done by XsToRmEr1 and was under a Creative Commons non-commercial license, so now I don't even feel guilty about using it.

I just wanted to share the trippy juxtaposition I put together to show that you never know what you are going to stumble onto in DC while searching for gelato.

1 comment:

Ed & Jeanne said...

You hope to see a lot of techno sidewalks in Italy?