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Yeah, I saw a similar article on this earlier today. Philistine that I am, my response had been a resounding "Meh." I suppose, though, that one could give this installation credit for having taken the hyperbole "can't live through it" and made it actual reality. Providing, of course, that it goes on long enough, never mind all the way to its intended completion. I wonder if the bookies are taking odds.
Is this where we have a spirited discussion on the nature of art? Good! I'll start: Let's consider the relationship between work and audience (is there any other basis for art?). Curiously, here the audience's attention and appreciation are clearly no longer relevant, at least in the usual way; in fact, after not much time at all the piece repels, inevitably becoming mere one-dimensional noise pollution. True, this lessens the would-be aesthete's guilt over intrusions such as one's bowels churning or taxes needing to be addressed - after all, a lamppost is just as likely to still be there whenever you revisit it - but are we to be grateful for that? I can look at my watch while paint dries, too. And at such a scale, compositional context is utterly lost. Sorry, I'm old-fashioned that way - we are not Ents. The Great Coming of the Node is instead reduced to a fashionable "happening" where people gather to babble over their wineglasses in the shadow of a years-long drone they would otherwise never even be there for - and that is the point: One is tempted to conclude that the piece is meant, by design, to incorporate audience fickleness into the total performance. One shouldn't be surprised, then, at the uncharacteristic hubbub in the midst of what is more or less supposed to be a "concert"; by design, it's inevitable. They're so distracted by each other that they'd be unready for the change were it not for the more overriding, stentorian voices haranguing the event, like street hawkers, to remind the attendees that there's a countdown, that they should give the appointed moment its deservedly reverent hush, appreciatively sigh "Ah!" when it manifests, and give each other knowing looks in its aftermath. One senses that the joke's on them.
Of course if everyone's in on the joke, that's one thing. But I expect there's always someone who's going to take it seriously. OTOH and in all fairness, I must salute the project's cohorts for their rash and lofty vision which, by the same token, affords them scads of time in which to do other stuff.
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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles
"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano
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