There’s a new public art installation on Michigan State University’s campus, but it’s not something you can see. Instead, it’s something you can hear.
To listen, start by standing in Michigan State University’s Beal Botanical Garden, then open an app and hit play. A quartet of saxophones will begin to play a repetitive, almost trance-like driving melody.
If you take about ten steps in any direction, the music changes, and the saxophones blare, almost overblown. Keep going along the Red Cedar River and there will be new riffs and rhythms until you make it to Beal Street.
The music is an interpretation of A Primitive Concert, a composition written by MSU alum Kakia Gkoudina.
"It has a very ritualistic essence to me, and the primitive part is where it gets interesting because of my idea of what the river stands for, this constant change,” Gkoudina explained.
She lent the piece to composer Hays Holladay for the new Art Moves MSU app and installation.
Holladay’s work involves creating compositions that move and change based on where a person is standing. It uses geotagged spots on a map to pair the location and music.
“It's supposed to be an example of using technology in a way that doesn't steal your attention from, you know, the moment that you're in, but instead augments it,” he said.
Holladay has been creating these kinds of projects for more than 10 years. He’s composed pieces for people to listen to while walking around the National Mall in Washington D.C. and Central Park in New York City.
It's supposed to be an example of using technology in a way that doesn't steal your attention from, you know, the moment that you're in, but instead augments it.Hays Holladay
And his work is on the MSU app, as well. It plays when you’re near another section of the Red Cedar River, from behind the MSU library to Farm Lane.
“As you're walking, you'll hear chimes, and you'll hear strings sort of pulsating.”
Holladay’s composition, Three Sides of the River, takes its name from the multiple versions you can hear depending which bank of the Red Cedar you’re standing on.
“If you walk up one side and come back the other, there's something familiar to it, but the sort of underpinning and harmonic sort of structure of it is different,” he said.
The third side of the river is what will play if you were to actually kayak on the water between the two banks.
“I was just thinking, like, could you create something that would work, sort of like harmonize between them and sort of create that missing link between the two compositions?” he said.
However, he noted the unique experience is only “for those who are brave enough to go in the water and interact with the geese that I had to fend off at times when I was on site.”
The project at MSU has been in the works for about two years. Holladay has been collaborating with the arts agency SOZO, which is also a partner with the university on the installation.
SOZO Creative Producer Chisa Yamaguchi says the potential for combining music with places really became clear several years ago.
“When a lot of venues shut down and had to during the pandemic, and so much of the public had been encouraged to be outside,” Yamaguchi said. “This project was so beautifully, organically fit to meet them where they were.”
In the spirit of meeting people where they are, Holladay even gave MSU campus landmark The Rock its own geotag, pairing it with a pulsing rhythm of strings.
And because of how he’s looped each aspect of his piece, it would be hard to hear the exact same thing twice.
"Your pace really defines where you're hitting these different elements at any given moment,” he said. “So, there is a kind of unique nature to the time you're there, as well as being, you know, on site itself.”
Our mind tends to create synchronicities. The flow of the river and a piece of music could create incredible audio-visual experiences just on their own.Kakia Gkoudina
Gkoudina, whose piece plays near the Beal Botanical Garden, says what’s going on outside and around campus will also create an ever-changing listening experience.
You might see squirrels scampering in time with some drums or a duck flapping its wings to the beat.
"Our mind tends to create synchronicities,” Gkoudina said. “The flow of the river and a piece of music could create incredible audio-visual experiences just on their own.”
Gkoudina is now back home in Athens, Greece but likes that she’s been able to leave something behind on campus.
"I feel like I'm not done with MSU and the campus,” she said. “There's still something going on. There's still an interaction there.”
These two pieces aren’t the end of Art Moves MSU. The university has plans for more installations through the app over the next five years.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.