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Music For Real Airports

Music for Real Airports is a multimedia art project by musicians The Black Dog and interactive artists Human which is presented in art galleries. It is also a new album of music by the Black Dog. It is a response to the reality of occupying the semi-public space of an airport, and a contemporary reply to Brian Eno's work from the 70s.

Airports are important and revealing. They are dystopian microcosms of a possible future society. The necessity of safety requires that they be systems of human control which only elevate the stress of their transient occupiers. Airports' promise travel, exploration and excitement but endlessly break that promise with their stale, tedious pressure. They are intense and overwhelming environments. Anyone who travels by air will have been puzzled by the way that airports tend to reduce us to a worthless pink blobs of flesh, the human equivalent of the bags on the conveyor belt. Yet despite the frustration of being in that atmosphere, some of the best of human nature is revealed, alongside some of the very worst. Airports make for great "people watching".

The artistic intent of Music for Real Airports is therefore to examine the nature of airports and to explore what they could be. We argue that, considering their importance in our lives, airports have not been sufficiently represented by artists. Perhaps the best known artistic response to airports is Brian Eno's Music for Airports, whose purpose seems to be largely elegiac, even if conceived as an antidote to the stress of plane delays. Our performances, events and installations are a more accurate update to Eno's work, and a to a degree, a riposte. Some members of The Black Dog were disappointed by Eno's treatment of the subject in 1978 and have been considering how to produce a more meaningful response ever since.

theblackdogma.com
humanstudio.com