Art Installation: NYC's Voice Tunnel

A new audio/visual art installation debuted on Saturday in the eight-block long Park Avenue tunnel. My Modern Met provides a description:

Open to pedestrians for the first time in history, the Park Avenue Tunnel welcomes visitors to experience an interactive light and sound installation like no other. Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has transformed the 1,400 foot long tunnel with 300 theatrical spotlights that create shimmering archways along the tunnel's walls and ceilings. It is called Voice Tunnel.

At the tunnel's center, participants speak into a special intercom that records their voices and then loops them. The louder, both in pitch and volume, the participants' voices are, the more intense the light beams become. On 150 loudspeakers that are spread throughout the tunnel, trailing voices of the past 90 participants can be heard by the pedestrians who are walking through. "So it's not a cacophony," Lozano-Hemmer tells WNYC, "the voices are quiet. They're more like little memories of the tunnel."

Voice Tunnel runs again on the next two Saturdays during Summer Streets, when Park Avenue is closed to vehicles through much of Manhattan.