Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Voice Tunnel

The Park Avenue Tunnel

For three consecutive Saturdays (August 3, 10 & 17), the Park Avenue Tunnel, with an entrance on 33rd Street and Park Ave., is open to pedestrians from 7:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. for an interactive light and sound art show. The electronic artist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, 45, is from Mexico City and develops interactive installations that are a convergence of architecture and performance art. He cites his inspirations as “phantasmagoria, carnival and animatronics” and his light and shadow works are, according to him, “antimonuments for alien agency.”

The queue started at 33rd Street and Park Ave. and wrapped around for more than 5 city blocks. They closed the line a little bit after 11:00 a.m. (when the line reached a point with an anticipated wait-time of an hour), but my friends (Kay-Lin and Juan) and I stood in line for about 45 minutes.

The exhibit is an interactive art installation featuring 300 spotlights and 150 loudspeakers controlled by the voices of the public. As you walk through, you hear the messages of hundreds of Voice Tunnel participants. The volume of their voice actually controls the intensity of the lights. If you would like to partake, there is (another) queue to speak into the intercom in the center of the tunnel. Each new voice recorded pushes the previous recording one position toward the end of the tunnel. The result is an intense cascading cacophony of sound and accompanying illumination. The experience can be a bit overwhelming at times, and you are required to sign a waiver before entering (of course I didn’t fully read it, but it was something about seizures and death, sensitivity to light and sound, etc., etc.)

The fleeting quality of not only the traveling messages, but also the short duration of this exhibit reminds the viewer about the importance of appreciating the present. “What makes the experience valuable is the fact that it’s ephemeral,” Lozano-Hemmer told The New York Times. The project “allows us to remember that we are on earth for a very brief period of time, and then we’re going to die. And it helps us live perhaps more intensely. We’re more alert to the fact that it ends, that we’re getting recycled, that there is a flow.”