James Murphy’s “Subway Symphony” Installed at Underground Park in New York

On New York’s Lower East Side, developers are putting together the Lowline, an underground park that, while still in progress, has been open to visitors since late last year. One feature of the Lowline is the “Subway Symphony,” the long-standing, Heineken-sponsored James Murphy project intended for New York’s subway system, which would feature musical turnstiles playing specially composed sounds. (For their part, the MTA has said, “we won’t mess with them—much less take the turnstiles out of service and risk disabling them for an art project.”) Today, a new promotional video for the Lowline project, narrated by LCD Soundsystem’s Nancy Whang, has arrived. Directed by Swedish filmmaker Petter Ringbom, the video features a walk-through of what’s there now (including the turnstiles) and what’s to come. Check it out below, via Nowness.

Reaction to the Lowline project has not been entirely positive. Last year, Gothamist wrote that the project’s “board includes investment bankers, CEOs, real estate developers, the owner of the Brooklyn Bowl, and a former SVP at Brookfield Properties,” who’ve “released a study claiming that its existence alongside the $1.1 billion Essex Crossing project along Delancey Street would raise property values and tax revenues by tens of millions of dollars.” The piece goes on to quote the Awl’s Kevin Sweeting, who wrote in an investigation of Lowline, “That someone would look ahead at Essex Crossing’s years-long, 1.1-billion-dollar project of neighborhood redefinition and think, ‘what else can we do to raise property values in this area’ is as best a summary of New York real estate as I can find.”

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