Christian Marclay: Festival, opening today at the Whitney Museum of American Art, turns the fourth floor gallery - the museum's largest space - into a sonic cave resounding with huge projections of images that relate to the zone between what we see and what we hear.

Except for the back gallery where music ephemera, from vinyl record sleeves to performance announcements, and Shuffle, Marclay's performance-in-a-box (Aperture 2007) are on view, the rest of the space is painted black. The longest wall is covered in notation staves, with a chalk rail, where visitors are invited to compose their own sounds. These will be regularly interpreted by a star roster of musicians lined up for daily performances in the gallery throughout the run.

At the preview yesterday, the largest space was taken over by Ulrich Krieger on sax, Alan Licht on guitar and Maria Chaves on turntables for a performance of Screen Play (2005). For nearly a half hour, a stream of black-and-white found images overlaid with brightly colored graphics that suggest a new form of musical notation, were accompanied by Marclay's trademark sound, which blurs distinctions between music and noise.

Top Row, left and center: Eliot Sharp, on Wind Up Guitar (1994). Right: Ulrich Krieger and Alan Licht performing Screen Play (2005). Second row: Frames from Zoom Zoom (2007-2009) in which cartoon-bubble words are rendered through brand images. Third Row, Left: Notation staves on the back wall ready to receive written scores by museum visitors; center and right: images from Screen Play (2005). Photos: Peggy Roalf.

While various other projections were screened in the surrounding areas, Elliot Sharp, master of chaos sound among other genres, performed Wind Up Guitar (1994) on a customized instrument which Marclay has fitted with eighteen-note music box mechanisms that play standards such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Blue Danube. Over these delicate sounds, Sharp created a wall of sound that engulfed the entire space.

That's just a sampling of what will unfold over the summer. Participating musicians comprise an A to Z (Anthony Coleman on piano - John Zorn on saxophone) of the progressive and experimental music scene of the past thirty years, most of whom have a long history of collaborating with Marclay.

Christian Marclay: Festival continues through September 26^th. Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue at 75^th Street, New York, NY. 212.570.3633. Please visit the website for information and a calendar of public events and performances. The exhibition catalog consists of a 3-volume magazine format publication that will be published as the festival continues, with volume is currently available in the museum bookstore.

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