MEGA-ORGAN: the interactive improvisation space

Imagine what it would sound like to be surrounded by seventy gigantic-mouthed harmonica players who could each play ten notes at once without ever needing to breathe. This is the core sonic image that grew into a series of interactive harmonica-playing inflatable sculpture installations: first Harmonibots and now MEGA-ORGAN.

MEGA-ORGAN will be both a piece of installation art and an environment for improvisation. During March 2017, MEGA-ORGAN will transform the loft of Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village into an ensconcing, living, breathing instrument. Judson has a pipe organ that sadly no longer functions. MEGA-ORGAN will resonify the organ using inflatable sculptures built from flexible plastic and joined with the organ pipes and walls. The sculptures will have dozens of harmonicas and other free-reeds affixed inside their air-escape points. High-power fans will animate the sculptures and excite the reeds, creating rich, organ-like, droney walls of sound. The fans will be controlled by a combination of motion sensors and physical switches that react when viewers/listeners enter the space. The color and geometrical schemes will draw inspiration from the architecture and iconography of the church.

My collaborators and I will document and enhance the installation by creating an album comprised of solo improvisers playing with MEGA-ORGAN. Improvisors Sam Pluta (electronics), Peter Evans (trumpet), Amirtha Kidambi (voice), Travis Laplante (saxophone), and Ingrid Laubrock (saxophone) will each engage musically with the installation and contribute a track for the album.

Hundreds of people visit Judson Memorial Church every week and everyone who enters this multisensory piece will engage in an act of improvisation. Visitors sculpt their own listening experiences by taking different paths through the installation and collaborating with others in the space to trigger changes in the sonic fabric. Judson Memorial Church is an historic space for dance, theatre, and art, and at the same time a hub for human services and social justice outreach. Situating Resurgence in this multipurpose, high-traffic space means that many people from outside the typical new music audience will experience the piece. Through the installation and the album together, this piece will reach both people in the church’s neighborhood and far-flung followers of the improvising artists.