Song 1

"Song 1" was one of those time-limited only-in-Washington experiences that need to be seen to be appreciated. Bluntly put, it doesn't sound that interesting: video clips are projected on the outside of a building while music is played. But that doesn't really tell the story.

The building was the Hirshhorn Museum, home of an extensive Smithsonian sculpture collection, both inside the building and around the grounds. The Hirshhorn is a round concrete donut, the outside wall measures 725 feet. The video clips played continuously -- one unbroken stream around the entire building -- while a non-repeating sound track played dozens of variations of a pop song, done by a wide variety of artists. The entire production was the work of Doug Aitken, a California multi-media artist.

The still photo collection of Song 1 includes a few nighttime shots of the National Mall.

Below you can find video clips of the event. Note that these are quite large; you want to transfer these to your machine by right-clicking on the link, rather than trying to play them through your browser. These are smaller, HD 720 versions of the original, much more massive HD 1080 clips:

Song 1 #1 video, 19.2 megabytes

Song 1 #2 video, 173.1 megabytes

Song 1 #3 video, 294.4 megabytes. At the end of this clip, you can see the Scottish actress Tilda Swinton (the witch in The Chronicles of Narnia) singing "I only have eyes for you."

Song 1 #4 video, 142.9 megabytes. This clip was taken from the corner near the National Air and Space Museum.