Inside the 100 Foot Piano by An-Ting Chung :: December 13 -14, 2007; 10 am – 10 pm :: Legacy Recording Studios, 509 W. 38th St. (between 10th and 11th Ave.), New York City.

Ms. Chung will channel each note from Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” as performed in 1955 by Glenn Gould, into its own respective speaker – 56 in all – while the piece plays in its entirety. The speakers, spaced six feet apart, will play the piece in unison as the music wraps around the audience. Ms. Chung calls this experiment a “sound sculpture,” or the molding of music around a space. She envisions the notes as individual tangible elements, with substance and mass that can be arrayed into an energized sonic structure throughout the giant Legacy studio space.

The enormous performance hall at Legacy Studios will be enveloped in music as Ms. Chung conducts this momentous experiment in sound for her exhibit, Inside the 100 Foot Piano. The audience will sit surrounded by speakers while the music, as Ms. Chung describes it, “moves in the space, as if Glenn Gould’s fingers are dancing.” The arrangement will play as the series of notes winds around the audience – every trill, crescendo, and movement will be captured in a moving, living melody.

This experience will create a three-dimensional soundscape, one in which the music will dance – not just hang in the air. Ms. Chung’s exhibit will give physical life to music, allowing it to travel around the hall, moving in and around the audience.

An-Ting Chung has an ongoing collaboration on film, video, and sound works with the widely acclaimed Shen Wei Dance Arts Company, who have performed at the Lincoln Center Festival and the Kennedy Center, and who will be responsible for the choreography of the opening ceremonies at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. She was also the sound editor for Shen Wei’s choreography for the piece “Re-, part two,” which was performed by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal in 2007. Ms. Chung has been creating sound exhibitions for the past 10 years beginning with her master’s degree thesis exhibition at Rhode Island School of Design in 1997. She also presented two exhibitions in New York in 2000 and 2007, both sponsored by the National Culture and Arts Foundation in Taiwan.