The People's Palace

A multimedia dance spectacular responding to the racist architecture of San Francisco's City Hall was held in the building itself a couple of weekends ago.

The thirty-minute work entitled The People's Palace was free to attend with an online reservation, and was financed by a huge assortment of grant-making institutions (click here for the program).

The major force behind the project was choreographer Joanna Haigood, who has been creating site-specific works around the country for decades, and the performers were from her local troupe, Zaccho Dance Theatre.

There were even aerialists dancing under the dome.

Though both Haigood and scenic designer Sean Riley acknowledge how gorgeous the Beaux Arts building is, they rightly point out that the busts, sculptures, and architecture are all European-centric and ignore the rest of the non-white population. In an interview with Riley, he notes: "So one of the things we really focused on — the elephant in the room — are these four rather large medallions in the ceiling. They have a relief carved within them representing the virtues liberty, learning, strength and equality. They’ve compiled images of lots of different symbols like you’d have on the back of the dollar bill. All this different symbolism. But they’re clearly not representative of the full breadth of our society."

To that effect, there was a musical interlude by Gregg Castro, who is the Culture Director of the Association of Ramaytush Ohlone along with a colorful panoply of dancers making their way up the grand staircase.

They were accompanied by four musicians (on flute/recorder/sax, harp, double bass, and trumpet) with a score by Marcus Shelby.

San Francisco City Hall is one of my favorite places in the world, especially since it became a party venue for everything from graduations to ballet openings. The building is also host to dozens of weddings every day which adds to the theatricality of the place. Finally, you can drop in on local government at work which tends to be both boring and fascinating in equal measure.

The Art of Noise at SFMOMA

An entertaining exhibit called The Art of Noise has just taken over the 7th floor of SFMOMA.

I was afraid they would be trotting out the same old psychedelic Fillmore posters from the 1960s, and there is a whole wall of those along with a huge array of analog album covers...

...but the bulk of the show is devoted to musical playback devices from the last century.

The design and engineering of music reproduction machines is fascinating. Pictured above are the 1912 Thomas Edison Fireside Model B cylinder phonograph and the 1935 RCA Victor Special Model K phonograph designed by John Vassos.

There is also a gorgeous 1947 Rock-Ola 1426 Jukebox from Chicago.

The 1960s brought exquisite, sleek design to High Fidelity as evidenced by this 1962 Wall Unit designed by Dieter Rams for Braun in Frankfurt.

Everyone will have their own Proustian madeleine moment walking through this exhibit, and one of mine was seeing the 901 Speaker designed in 1968 by Amar Bose in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Also featured is an historic unit used for 1980s DJ sets in Compton, California from Technics in Osaka, Japan: the 1979 SL1200MK2 turntables along with the 1984 DM-1450 mixer and preamplifier.

Another Japanese product is the JVC RC-M90 Boombox, from 1981.

There is also an area where you can relax on divans with headphones attached to 21st century playback devices.

In the space usually employed for videos, the HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 2 installation has been created by the famous audio engineer Devon Turnbull (OJAS). A DJ was playing tracks on turntables from various jazz albums with the purest analog sound imaginable. Because of a strong preference for live music, I have never been much of a High Fidelity enthusiast, but for many people it was an all-consuming passion. So if you are any kind of audio fetishist, this exhibit is sheer pleasure.