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Approximately one million people trample through Times Square everyday – some incessantly pausing to snap pictures of all the chaos while others beeline without ever looking up. On November 11 at 2pm on the corner of 46th and Broadway, Tony Conrad, clad in a neon green T-shirt, used a power drill to open a wooden box half his size that featured a wooden lever, a doorbell, and a sound hole. The pixieish blonde Jennifer Walshe (of the avant-garde opera XXX_Live_Nude_Girls!!!) joined him with a similar wooden box, except hers was positioned horizontally and propped up wooden legs with a much larger, extended trumpet-like sound hole. The intonarumori (or “sound-machines”) they revealed had a DIY aesthetic and didn’t seem to promise much of a musical performance, but a crowd quickly accumulated on this cement island in the middle of Broadway to watch.

The subway grate Conrad and Walshe performed on top of is a permanent public sound installation, entitled Times Square, created by Max Neuhaus in 1977. The sound work continues to be heard 24 hours a day, seven days a week thanks to the support of the DIA Arts Foundation, the MTA’s Arts for Transit, and the Times Square Alliance. The Neuhaus work underscored the performance. And while it is hard to compete with a naked cowboy, a bald eagle, and a famous actress (all of which were present during the performance), most of the people passing through Times Square were drawn to the harmony that Conrad and Walshe created between the howling and chirping of the intonarumori and the Neuhaus installation. While we normally think of musical performances around subway stations as busking rather than an intentional intervention in public space, perhaps this performance, and the crowd assembled to hear it, supports Neuhaus’ theory that, “Our perception of space depends as much on what we hear as what we see.” Perhaps it might provoke us to rethink our relationship to the urban environment, and the senses that define that relationship.

Besides, it is still impressive that the futurist sound – developed a century ago – can still emerge above the rest in one of the most raucous intersections in the world. The contemporary wooden sound machines that Conrad and Walshe played are based on the original intonarumori, invented in 1913 by the Italian futurist and sound artist Luigi Russolo, and arguably the first analog synthesizer. Russolo’s intent was to produce beautiful industrial noise (try to imagine the sound of a skyscraper being dragged across Manhattan—that is its desired effect). These instruments were destroyed during WWII, but as Conrad stated in a conversation after the performance, “They were found in Italian graves…still bearing the stains of the vegetables thrown at them during the first Futurist performances.”  Replicas were designed under the specialized supervision of Luciano Chessa.

The Futurist Manifesto celebrates its hundredth anniversary this year. Making sense of it today feels a bit backwards but we do it, among other reasons, because it informs our current culture of noise music, performance, and public art intervention. This brief high-profile buskers’ performance/birthday party was planned in conjunction with the Performa 09 Biennial “to sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt.”  What better way to do it than with noise music, a form that helps people make sense out of the chaos around them?

After the show, Conrad offered an affectation of the manifesto.  “We dont like WAR,” he roared and turned to refer to the absent military recruitment station.  “It used to be there…” he trailed as though he didn’t know what to make of the disappeared prop. Naturally he lost his momentum: “Are you my organizers?” he asked us in a playful, defeated tone. “No, we are your spectators!”  we responded for fear he’d start ordering us around. Then he turned his personal video camera away from himself and angled it on us, announcing, “You are the organizers of the future! Tell everyone!”

Photos and video excerpt by Veronica Kavass.

Veronica Kavass is a curator based in New York.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.