The Dream House

How you feel inside the Dream House, a 20-year-old light and sound installation located in a Tribeca rowhouse, may ultimately come down to your opinion of wall-to-wall carpeting that’s steeped in Nag Champa smoke. But it’s the noise, that inescapable mind-scrambling drone, that you’ll remember after long after your clothes and hair have aired out.

We reach the exhibit from a nondescript doorway at 275 Church Street on a rain-swept Saturday night that’s chased revelers inside their cocktail bars and boutique hotels. After repeatedly poking the buzzer we gain access to a steep stairwell that rumbles as if heavy machinery lurks behind the walls. At the top of the stairs an attendant asks us to remove our shoes, and then we fumble for the $6 suggested donation. Once inside, a narrow hall leads to an airless room that’s drenched with purple light, incense, and a noise that evokes a hovering alien spaceship.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh

Four stadium sized speakers positioned in corners pour out a jarring racket: a high ringing, a lower-pitched wail, and an unsettling physical vibration as the sound waves overlap. The piece, created by minimalist composer La Monte Young, uses thirty-two frequencies at mathematically precise intervals (the math is so complex that the composition has a 105-word title) generated by a custom Rayna synthesizer. Young, who has been influenced by the humming of telephone poles among other things, has said of the piece, “Not only is it unlikely that anyone has ever worked with these intervals before, it is also highly unlikely that anyone has ever heard them or perhaps even imagined the feelings they create.”

Marian Zazeela’s Ruine Window 1992

The sound is relentless, but shifts in pitch as we change positions in the room. We investigate a few of Marian Zazeela’s artworks, suspended spirals that cast colored shadows on the walls. In a smaller back room that’s somewhat insulated from the speakers, someone is deeply zoning into a mounted rectangular sculpture and its mesmerizing symmetrical fuscia and purple shadows. Finally, we plop down on pillows in the front room, a little stunned by sound waves that command a level of alertness somewhere between a ringing phone and a smoke alarm. I suppose we were expecting something more audibly pleasant, or at least subtle (Max Neuhas’ cool sound installation at Dia, Time Piece Beacon, comes to mind). But I think that’s also the point; the sound, intensified by the shut-in environment, demands a focus that ultimately quiets other thoughts, but remains sustainable for a long period of time. Towards the end of our stay I can see how some people might not last five minutes, some might stay for an hour, and some might find the experience addictive.

Although, as we emerge from our sound-bath, the attendant affirms that extended listening can make you feel a bit nauseated. So moderation of one’s drone intake is probably best.

The Dream House
275 Church St between White St and Franklin St
Thu-Sat 2pm-12am until June 15, 2013. Reopens in Sep 2013.