Victoria’s newest piece of public art can play Beethoven, help keep you safe from a fall and provide exercise.
The City of Victoria has installed an interactive, musical piece of art on stairs of the parkade at 575 Yates St., leading down to Bastion Square.
It consists of handrails with light-sensitive nodes inserted into aluminum covers. Touch or grip the nodes and a connected speaker produces a beat, backup sound or piano note. A user can play everything from dubstep to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy on the 10 railings.
The handrails, also connected to winking LED lights, can be found on all 10 landings of the parkade’s five floors, offering a variety of sounds.
It’s an arrangement guaranteed to get a child’s imagination and muscles pumping.
“It will help with their aerobic activity,” Victoria Coun. Pam Madoff said at the installation’s official opening Tuesday.
The piece is the creation of Victoria artists Scott Amos and David Parfit and came about as part of a competition to liven up city parkades staged by Victoria’s Art in Public Places Committee. The $10,000 cost was funded by the Public Art Reserve Fund..
Two other Victoria parkades are being livened up, with murals in the Centennial Square facility and First Nations artwork planned for Johnson Street.
Amos, whose business card identifies him as a “mostly harmless mad scientist,” and Parfit have created other interactive pieces for places as varied as the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Rifflandia.
They include:
• The Amazing Philli-phone beer bottle organ for Phillips Brewing.
• Think Cubes, large, interactive light sculptures at Dockside Green in Vic West.
• The Registroid, an antique cash register modified to play music, seen at music festivals on Vancouver Island.
Amos said the stairwell piece has already become a draw for young people. “It’s like this weird little secret they discovered on their own.”
Musical artists and dance groups have expressed an interest in creating performances on the stairwell, he said, adding he would “love to have different parts played of one concerto or one person running up and down the stairs or multiple people even.”
Amos said the piece, designed for 10 years of operation, can change its musical repertoire, something he plans to do about every six months.
Doug Jarvis, chairman of the Art in Public Places Committee, said Amos and Parfit’s work, besides livening up the parkade, will animate the neighbouring portion of Bastion Square.
It’s a space that’s isolated from the main square adjacent to the former Maritime Museum building but features a wall laced with ivy and plenty of space for folding chairs or stage.
“It’s a beautiful little location but it needed something to activate the space,” Jarvis said. “This is helping to activate it, giving the public a reason to do something more than just park the car.”
