A video playing on a wall might seem out of place in a collegiate institution. Even more so when the institution is MIT, and the video isn't about nuclear fission or astrophysics, but music.
The short film "Ear to the Ground" (1982) centers on artist David Van Tieghem making music in Manhattan. Dressed in a suit and tie and topped with a fedora hat, Van Tieghem moves down the sidewalks, streets and alleyways of the city armed with a mallet in each hand, drumming on everything in sight.
Sight trumps sound in Van Tieghem's video. The real reason to view "Ear to the Ground" is to watch the drummer in action. Van Tieghem is a master of improvising beats and instruments. He jumps so that his mallets hit a high street sign and hunches over to experiment with the musical potential of the sidewalk and the litter that adorns it. Nothing is off limits.
During the video, Van Tieghem drums on some of the more obvious "instruments" in the city, including empty trash cans, but he also challenges viewers' notions of what an instrument is. He impressively drums on shards of glass through a wrought-iron fence and leaps up onto a loading dock to beat on a bunch of cardboard boxes. There is an element of suspense to this musical exodus; clever close-up shots give the viewer only a hint of what Van Tieghem might play next, keeping audiences engaged in his urban musical journey.
At the end of the video, the sound of mallets hitting the pavement is drowned out by the other sounds of the city, mainly car horns. The cacophony of the urban landscape becomes part of Van Teighem's performance. Running down the middle of the street, the drummer stops here and there to beat on the road. Van Tieghem then runs off into the sunset, clicking his heels. A rewind sound brings the viewer back to brief clips of previous scenes before the film ends. The spacious skyline at the end of "Ear to the Ground" seems to suggest that music is truly everywhere, even in the middle of a big, busy city.
While Van Tieghem is obviously the driving innovator behind the project, producer Kit Fitzgerald and director John Sanborn deserve credit for artful and visually appealing cinematography. In some shots, the camera focuses on the corner of a building and waits for the musician to come around the corner. When he rounds the corner, hands flying, the effect is comically dramatic.
By using the streets of Manhattan as a musical instrument, Van Tieghem changes the conventional understanding of what it means to make music. His form of performance brings music out of the auditorium and into the world. "Ear to the Ground" reminds viewers that traditional instruments are not the only instruments that can or should be played; the sounds of everyday life should also be unleashed.
Performance art was introduced in the 1970s and has been popular ever since. Blue Man Group and STOMP are two of the many contemporary groups that were inspired by artists like Van Tieghem. The difference between these modern groups and Van Tieghem is that Van Tieghem improvises as he travels, emphasizing that music is something that can be taken anywhere. For Van Tieghem, life is a musical journey.
"Ear to the Ground" clocks in at just under four and a half minutes before repeating itself. It is so visually and sonically entertaining that a curious passerby could easily stop to watch for a moment and end up viewing the entire video two or three times.
"Ear to the Ground" is playing until Nov. 29, 2009 on the Media Test Wall in MIT's Whitaker Building (Building 56 on an MIT map).
