Core77

For those of you that like your design to occasionally transcend the visual realm, grab a boombox or MP3 player with speakers and head over to the arch at Washington Square Park on Saturday night. Every year since 1992, composer Phil Kilne has presented Unsilent Night, an outdoor ambient music piece for an infinite number of boomboxes that is different from every listener's perspective.

This free outdoor participatory sound sculpture is made of a canon of tracks, recorded on cassette tapes, CDs and MP3s, and played through a procession of boomboxes roving through city streets. It's like non-denominational Christmas caroling, except that instead of singing, each person carries a "voice" in the piece, in effect, becoming a city block-long sound system!

More after the jump

In 2008 the New York event will happen on Saturday, December 13th. Carolers (or rather, boomboxers) will meet at the Arch in Washington Square Park at 6:45 pm, begin at 7 pm and proceed eastward to Tompkins Square Park, where the piece will end around 8 o'clock.

Kline's invitation states:

It would be really cool if you could join us and bring a boombox. The more tapes we run, the bigger and more amazing the sound will be. This past Christmas we had several hundred boomboxes and well over 1000 people...it was really spectacular. If you'd like to participate, please e-mail me at boombox {at} mindspring {dot} com so I will know how many tapes to make (we also have MP3s available for folks who have iPods with speakers). If you'd like to participate but don't have a boombox, I have several dozen and you can grab one...and if you want to come and just listen, that's cool, too. Help us make a BIG (and joyful) noise.

In addition to New York Unsilent Night has, in recent years, been presented in many cities worldwide, including Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Tucson, Detroit, Boulder, Seattle, Vancouver, the Yukon, Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, Middlesbrough, England, Hamburg, Germany, and Los Angeles. If it's not happening in a city near you, start your own by e-mailing unsilentnight@gmail.com for details.

The CD version of Unsilent Night is available on Cantaloupe.