Murray Hidary - "Distanced Together"
Murray Hidary - Distanced Together
Distanced Together is a work which could have been considered art a few years ago, but instead Hidary simply produced another hokey, unoriginal piece of pandemic scrap.
Murray Hidary is a composer, artist, and self-proclaimed tech pioneer. His recent sound installation piece, Distanced Together, is currently on display at Mass MOCA. As implied in the title, Distanced Together is yet another work created to mimic the sounds of human experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Hidary composed the large ensemble work for sixty solo string players, organized into a literal clock of twelve string quintets. Each player has their own separate part, but a vast majority of the music is doubled or simply passed from player to player.
Premiered with live players the past weekend, Hidary's sound installation replaces each musician with a speaker playing a recording of the same part. Unfortunately, this faux-musician setup trivializes the work even further. The piece's main draw was experiencing and especially watching all sixty musicians perform at once. The inhuman speakers do not mimic the feeling of human inconsistency, and the limited light show Hidary includes as accompaniment is not nearly interesting enough to consider the sound installation a work of engaging or effective art.
Compositionally, Hidary has solidly presented another work focusing on an economy of means. Distanced Together is composed with an almost exclusive B-flat minor pentatonic scale, which slowly expands to a diatonic one throughout its forty-seven minutes. Watching the players was a key component to the art, but even they clearly grew bored of the droning pulsations after a time. The modal center only shifts when Hidary shines bright blue or bright red lights across the audience. Flashing blue lights with a major mode and red, scary lights when returning to minor only further the too apparent cliché throughout the work's entirety.
Distanced Together is a work which could have been considered art a few years ago, but instead Hidary simply produced another hokey, unoriginal piece of pandemic scrap.
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