Christopher Janney
Christopher Janney’s site-specific works facilitate interactions between people and their environment, creating in the urban landscape a sense of spontaneity.
About the Residency
Past Event
Artist Lecture and Demonstration
March 20, 2013
Biography
About
Christopher Janney (SM’78) began “painting with sound” in 1976, combining architecture and jazz at MIT’s Environmental Art program under artist Otto Piene. Janney’s thesis “Soundstair” initiated the “Urban Musical Instruments” series whose large-scale installations — often using interactive electronics, colored glass, and sound — are now found in subways, airports, and other spaces around the United States and Europe. These “performance sculptures” give physical form to sound and movement while simultaneously making architecture more responsive and “alive.”
For more than thirty years, Christopher Janney has created numerous permanent interactive sound/light installations and performances, including Harmonic Convergence at the Miami Airport, REACH:NY at the 34th St. subway stop in New York, HeartBeat:mb with Sara Rudner and Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Soundstair, which was most recently installed at the Boston Children’s Hospital. He is the founder of the multi-media studio PhenomenArts, Inc.
Learn more about Christopher Janney.
This residency is presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology.
In the Media
In the Media
Design Boom: Harmonic Convergence
NPR: Christopher Janney, Sculpting Sound
Huffington Post: Reach New York: An Urban Musical Instrument
