appresearch 's List: Public Art

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• LONDON — The piano was standing innocently near the Millennium Bridge, minding its own business except for a cheeky come-on — “Play Me, I’m Yours” — printed on its side. F
• All around London its fellow pianos were waiting, too — 30 of them in all — part of an interactive art project meant to challenge people to come out of their urban insularity and also to provide some summertime music.
• Luke Jerram, an artist who lives in Bristol.
• He previously brought incarnations of it to Birmingham, England; São Paolo, Brazil; and Sydney, Australia. “It’s a blank canvas for everyone’s creativity.”
• The London project is scheduled to last until Monday and has cost about £14,000 (or a bit more than $22,000), Mr. Jerram said. The biggest obstacle was the city’s tangled, multilayered bureaucracy, which required him to obtain a separate music license for each location.
• He used old, unwanted pianos that people had “chucked out,” he said — in contrast to São Paolo, where pianos are scarce and so precious that they cost a year’s salary. There, some people traveled for hours just to have the chance to play.
• The pianos, which are secured to the ground with metal cables and have plastic covers in case of rain, have proved a huge hit.
• outside the Natural History Museum, on Portobello Road, in Leicester Square and in the churchyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral,
• None has been vandalized. People have tended to relinquish their places courteously after a while to allow others to perform.
• A piano tuner who travels around on a bicycle, providing on-the-spot help, has had to bring in reinforcements to deal with all the wear and tear.

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