farmdoc's blog post number 284

Darling Meg’s 2005 Display Purposes Only project, which involved hundreds of specially-printed t-shirts hung around several world cities, was original, quirky and socially innovative. I think it didn’t receive the publicity it deserved. This month a similar project began: as part of the 2009 Sydney Festival, Luke Jerram, a self-described colour-blind installation artist bought 30 pianos on eBay, and placed them around Sydney and Parramatta – in public squares, bus shelters, parks, a tattoo parlour, hairdressers, a ferry etc – for the public to play. He says he doesn’t mind who plays them, what they play, or for how long; and he wants them to be personalised and decorated. He calls the project ‘Play me, I’m Yours’. Click here for its website, here for a 7.30 Report piece on it, and here for Jerram’s website. I think PMIY’s wonderful, for the same reasons DPO was. In a world replete with, and overwrought by, crises, some spontaneous piano music in public places must be a positive thing. So bravissimi, Mr Jerram and the Sydney Festival. But not the Tamworth Country Music Festival where last Friday, in an act of self-indulgent banality, an attempt was made to break the world record for the largest gathering of guitarists, held by India at 1,782. It failed by a mere 1,187; only 595 attended. I’m pleased. The world needs more spontaneity and less institutionalisation. And thus more people like Luke Jerram and darling Meg.