Siren

It's a dark room in the Roundhouse Community Centre. There are about two dozen metal tripods of varying heights positioned around the room. They are topped by bars holding electronic loudspeakers at each end. At the appointed time two men walk around with tiny screwdrivers and activate the devices.   First they light up and emit tones of different frequencies and eventually they all start to spin at different speeds. The audience can walk around the room and find which corners or nooks offer the best tone poem. The whole thing lasts about 45 minutes. This is Siren, a sound art/performance installation by British artist Ray Lee.  For a great idea of how cool it looks and sounds watch this video. One of the neat things that happens at PuSh is the Children's Choice Awards, awards handed out by a group of elementary school kids from Surrey. They get ferried around to all the performances and sure enough, they turned up at Siren. The kids enjoyed almost getting their heads lopped off by whirling loudspeakers, bobbing around to distort the sound and pulsing their fingers over their ears. I think this one was a hit. The last performances of Siren are on January 24th at 4, 7 and 8:30.