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Talking Heads star turns Roundhouse into musical instrument for all to play
Peter Dominiczak27 Jul 2009
Members of the public are to be given the chance to "play" a Grade II listed building.
Talking Heads star David Byrne is to turn Camden's historic Roundhouse into a giant musical instrument for an interactive sound installation called Playing The Building.
Mechanical devices will be attached to the building's metal beams, pillars and pipes to make them generate sound, which will be channelled down to a keyboard, and visitors will be invited to come and play it.
Window shutters on the domed roof of the Roundhouse - a former railway repair shed now used as a venue for gigs and art exhibitions - will be opened to show the building in a new way.
Playing The Building drew vast crowds when it was staged in New York's Battery Maritime Building last year and at the Färgfabriken building in Stockholm in 2005.
Byrne, who was born in Scotland but is now based in New York, said of his previous shows: "After thinking about how girders vibrate when a truck or a train goes over a metal bridge, it seemed just a matter of working out the mechanics of playing a building."
Playing The Building opens on 8 August and runs until 31 August.
