Friday June 16 08:47 PM EDT
EMP: Hendrix Goes High-Tech
dailynews.yahoo.com
By Anders Wright
SEATTLE Once you've ventured beyond its foreboding exterior and paid the exhibit fee, the Experience Music Project (EMP) experience, as it
were, begins with the Sky Church, complete with a three-story screen, strobe lights, and, of course, rock and roll.
Laser Hendrix has come a long way.
The $240 million structure was funded by local billionaire Paul Allen and will be opened officially next weekend with an A-list series of concerts
from the likes of Metallica, Kid Rock, Eminem, No Doubt, Matchbox Twenty, Beck, and others.
After recovering their senses, museum patrons then find their way to the Hendrix Gallery, an in-depth look at Seattle's rock and
roll native son, relating his life and times via an impressive collection of Hendrix artifacts. The objects themselves, along with
the pertinent details of Hendrix's life, are described in detail by the likes of Taj Mahal and Living Colour's Vernon Reid.
The entire EMP encounter follows the "wired world" vision of Paul Allen, the Seattle billionaire who funded the project.
Visitors are given Museum Exhibit Guides (MEGs) as they enter, a portable CD-ROM with a highly interactive control,
allowing audio on demand at different sections of each exhibit. The entire museum is infused with a sense of interactivity, giving
guests an opportunity to make their own brand of rock and roll with an enormous number of high-tech gadgets and toys.
Though stuffed full of memorabilia, there are parts of the museum that are likely to be less trafficked than others. Many sections of the Northwest
Passage, interesting as it may be to locals, will be passed over as fans head straight to the Grunge section. And the Gehry Exhibit, dedicated to the
work of architect Frank Gehry, fails to justify the odd colors and shapes of the Project's design, which resemble not so much the intended smashed
guitar as a diseased kidney.
That said, there's plenty here to fawn over, as well. As museum visitors traverse to the second floor ? and the top section of an immense sculpture,
made up of over 500 instruments ? they come across EMP's two best galleries.
The first, Milestones, tracks the history of rock and roll in much the same manner as the Hendrix Gallery, with mini-exhibits on
everything: punk, hip-hop, fashion, and even the early days of jazz and swing. Pieces of memorabilia range from skateboard
decks to Janis Joplin's boa to a suit once owned by the late Notorious B.I.G.
But it's EMP's high-tech playground, Sound Lab, that will invite repeated visits. In this music exploratorium, guests are able to
try their hand at almost any instrument in a mini-studio, with digital assistance and none of the costly fees of a real recording
studio. Guitars, keyboards, drums, mixing boards, turntables, even a slew of vocal studios are included, allowing visitors to play
with what brought them to the site in the first place: music. In the same way an interactive room is a hit with the kids at most museums, the Sound
Lab allows adults to challenge themselves on the mic and to rediscover their musical inner-child at the same time. |
