Location: Brooklyn, NY

Practice: Printmaker with an ongoing project of wheat pasting portraits to the walls of cities around the world. Swoon, also known for installation work and her Swimming Cities boat projects, is one of the founders of Airlift’s musical architecture project.

Airlift Project: Dithyrambalina // The Music Box Fence // The Music Box: Roving Village

Website: http://shop.swooninprint.com/pages/about-us

Synopsis:

In the beginning there was one: Swoon’s iconic design for Dithyrambalina!

Description:

At the start of Airlift’s evolving engagement with musical architecture we imagined that we would make one musical house. As lead visual artist on the project Swoon was tasked with designing the look of the house. After a few tries she created Dithyrambalina - as a joyus ode to New Orleans’ architecture. A cardboard model was soon followed by a 10ft quarter scale model for Dithy, as we like to call her. She was a beauty but we still didn’t know how to make her sing.

That was the moment when musical architecture co-founder, Delaney Martin, decided to create The Music Box: A Shantytown Sound Laboratory. Inspired by Swoon’s ten foot model, Martin envisioned a village of small shacks and shanties that could act as laboratories for artists to create musical inventions that could be incorporated into Swoon’s design.

But Dithyrambalina is still on the cards…. when we get our permanent site she will be our grand, magnum opus, looking out over the rooftops of the village she has spawned. TO But Dithyrambalina is still in the cards….

Musical houses in the shadow of the Calanthean Canyon

Description:

New Orleans Airlift second outpost of musical architecture was part of the Shreveport Regional Arts Council’s UNSCENE! Residency program. Airlift was so happy to work with over 30 local artists from Shreveport, sharing ideas and building musical houses together. The most exciting element of our project is that our collaborators are now in charge of the installation, creating their own performances and experiences in this new musical village.

Our site was in the shadow of the Calanthean Temple, a building erected in 1923 by the Order of Calanthe, an African-American womens society that held legendary performances by Cab Calloway and others during the heyday of Shreveport’s music scene in the 1940s.

The Airlift team was led by artistic director Delaney Martin who collaborated with fellow project founder Taylor Shepherd on one of our newly transportable musical houses. Music Box New Orleans veterans Ross Harmon (New Orleans) and Frank Pahl (Detroit) also joined the team creating their outstanding chime-based house “The Bower’s Nest”. Frank acted as our conductor for an outstanding opening performance.

We were also honored to work with a member of The Residents, a cult band whose members have stayed largely anonymous. Rather than join us, we were haunted by a Resident via a video piece and vocals created especially for our project. They were incorporated into a custom built log cabin of the artist’s design created in collaboration with locals Nate Treme and Josh Porter.

Our local team of artists were led by Peter Fetterman who galvanized the most awesome community of artists and musicians ahead of our arrival. Folks like Jon Mackey, whose musical greenhouse perched 20 ft. up on a catwalk built in just three weeks by Jimmy Cousins, along with a spiral staircase and a Thermin whose antenna was a geodesic dome. Josh October got an amazing sound out a barrel-based instrument he had been dreaming about making for years, while Brett Roberts‘ House of God harnessed the power of PVC pipes. Christian Maes made a bottle carillon that was so elegant and we even had a Windmill created by John Martin in collaboration with Laura Thompson.

Synopsis:

The United States Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine invited New Orleans Airlift to complete a very special mission at the Art Arsenale Museum.

Description:

Airlift was invited by the American Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine in cooperation with the Art Arsenale Museum to realize an outpost installation of Musical Architecture. This was our first “Outpost” and has become the model for expanding our idea of Musical Architecture to new communities. By researching the architectural and musical history of the specific place and working with seven local artists, we were able to create an installation that reflected Kiev’s unique culture.

Dimitriy Tiazhlov, a Ukranian documentary film maker, followed their adventure collecting materials, wandering through Ukrainian markets and collaborating with a slew of amazing Ukranian artists. The film culminates in the building and performance of the musical house in the Art Arsenale Museum.

Collaborators:

Delaney Martin, Taylor Lee Shepherd and Andrew Schrock collaborated with Ukrainian artists Ivanov Down, and Dmytro Nikolaienko to build the structure. Airlift also imported instruments like Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Noise Floor and Lindsay Karty’s Electric Curtain, plus new inventions from Music Box artists Taylor Kuffner, Ben Mortimer and Ross Harmon.

If The Music Box was America, the Shantytown Sound Laboratory would be our Plymouth Rock.

Description:

The Music Box: A Shantytown Sound Laboratory (2011-12) on Piety St. in New Orleans was our first installation of musical architecture, acting as a testing ground and proof-of-concept for our vision of what musical architecture could be. The installation was built from the salvaged remains of a 250 year-old house on the site where it had stood. Invented instruments were embedded into walls, ceilings, and floors of nine small structures that supported boundary-breaking musical performances and inspired wonder, exploration and invention in visitors of all ages.

Created by 25 collaborating artists, performed on by over 70 world-class musicians and attended by over 15,000 visitors and 500+students, The Music Box captured the hearts of the New Orleans community. In addition to seven orchestral concerts led by conductors, the instruments of The Music Box were put to test in recordings sessions and pop-up performances by amazing and diverse musicians including Thurston Moore, Dark Dark Dark, the sample-based band Javelin, the Brooklyn pop punk duo Japanther, and noise heroes Black Dice.

Thanks to all the artists, staff, volunteers, musicians and neighbors who made the magic of The Music Box possible.

Artistic Director: Delaney Martin
Associate Curators: Taylor Shepherd, Theo Eliezer, & Swoon
Musical Curator and Cheif Conductor: Quintron
Associate Musical Curator: Jay Pennington

Press: Nola, Voanews, NPR, NY Mag 

Musical architecture for New Orleans and Beyond!

Project Description:

The idea of Musical Architecture was conceived of by Delaney Martin, Taylor Lee Shepherd and Swoon in 2010. They were inspired by a falling down 18th century creole cottage and New Orleans under-celebrated class of tinkerers, inventors and avant-garde musicians. Seeking to imaginatively reuse of the cottage’s salvaged materials, they combined the two pillars of New Orleans culture, music and architecture, into an idea for a house that could be played like an instrument. Swoon soon dreamt up an idea of what their musical house could look like, sound artist Shepherd thought about how it would work, while Martin imagined how to bring it all to life.

Martin answered this question by conceiving and leading The Music Box: A Shantytown Sound Laboratory in 2011 - 12 as a prototyping experiment for their notion of musical architecture. The installation was made from the salvaged remains of the original creole cottage and created in collaboration with over 25 artists on Piety St. in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans. 15,000 visitors came to interact with invented instruments that were embedded in the ceilings, walls and floors of the structures while 70+ musicians from New Orleans and beyond performed orchestral concerts on the structures to sold out audiences. Airlift and our team of artists soon realized that we had outgrown our original site and decided to incorporate the successful village concept into their designs going forward.

Since closing the original Music Box opportunities to create outposts of this New Orleans-inspired project has taken Airlift as far as Kiev, Ukraine and as close as Shreveport, Louisiana where new iterations of the project have reflected local music and culture.In 2015 we had a triumphant return to New Orleans with our Music Box Roving Village held in City Park. In 2016 we opened Music Box Village, our permanent sonic playground, performance venue and laboratory for musical architecture in New Orleans.

Press: NY Times, Smithsonian Magazine, NPR

Synopsis:

New Orleans Airlift and Bounce have a history.

Project Description:

New Orleans Airlift first collaborated with Bounce artists shortly after our inception. New York producer Dre Skull contacted us to locate and coordinate with local legends Sissy Nobby, Big Freedia and Katey Red. That project led to deeper relationships between Airlift and the wider Bounce community. From there, we began partnerships that continue to this day, leading to projects like the first ever Bounce showcase at South by Southwest, creative projects with visual artists like Aiko, fashion luminaries like Rick Owens, and musical partnerships with bands like the Brooklyn art punk duo Japanther and dance music superstar Diplo. Most recently, Jay (aka DJ Rusty Lazer) and the entire Airlift team worked with Windows to bring together the Bounce and Vogue scenes in a massive "Vounce" Ball focused on the undeniable similarities and unique differences between the two cultures.

Press: Amoeblog