Then embarrassingly enough, the days become a new month and an entirely new outlook: more on future than past. Weather creates a model, a pattern of slow-slow, quick-quick. Temperatures up and down. Hot and cool. Delicious to observe, to enjoy changes.
Beware: What you see as often as not really can be believed, even more so if music is supplied. But what if what you are dealing with A1 magic and its wizardly rays? What you see then is likely perhaps a fantasy, some mechanical imagination. And, imagine, even when it's happening outdoors!
So it was on Sunday the 24th on the grounds of Kennedy Center's Reach Plaza, when a so-called data sculpture was on show in an enormous 10 square meter black cube created by digital artist (so the Wash Post said) Refik (could that be 're-fixed?) Anadol (anagram of?) in homage to the Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. A soundscape with moving parts that seemed to make sense only to listeners and viewers who already knew the music. The sound blared, the children played - how few of them seemed really curious beyond trying to touch the screen. The tape or whatever it was kept rolling, repeating insanely for a 16-minute run. Ok: so what if a Czech billionaire was the sponsor (and major Kennedy Center donor). The spectacle isn't a new one apparently: commissions are the artist's forte for dramatic settings such as the opening of the Las Vegas sphere last year. It took a newspaper article to explain what was going on - so pity those who stumbled upon the scene without having done their homework. "Dvorak Dreams" is the title. Results, admittedly - even to critics, are uneven. But long live the creative process in whatever form.
The danger I felt is its capacity to anethesize an audience. Spontaneity, live musicality, are naturally elusive in such work. I don't question that my immediate reaction was to pursue more seriously than ever the value of reaching out to people - strangers - in casual encounters, to feel elicit some real contact the way someone might feel listening to a live concert performed by human beings who have mastered the ability to create sound and make it seem spontaneous.
