In New Orleans, music seems to exist everywhere. The city itself is woven from the notes of generations of musicians, all leaving their mark on this historic and beloved town. But there is a little shantytown in NOLA that is even more musical than the rest of the city – a place that is actually made of music.

(above and top images via: Inhabitat)

The Music Box is a tiny village of shacks and little houses built from materials salvaged from a collapsed 18th-century cottage. Each one was purpose-built to either house an instrument or act as an instrument itself. It is musical architecture: interactive installation art that is strange, unspeakably beautiful and unlike anything else.

(image via: FastCo)

Some of the instruments are straightforward, making it possible to guess the sounds they might make. But others are completely inscrutable, consisting of all sorts of odds and ends and looking like complicated toys or overly ornate decorations. Once the musicians take their places and the sounds begin manifesting, however, it becomes clear that every piece of this highly unusual village has a purpose.

(images via: FastCo)

The installation was created by New Orleans Airlift in collaboration with 25 artists. Each designed and helped to build a shack-sized instrument in the installation. These small structures are prototype instruments, kind of a real-world study in the art of musical architecture. Although the Music Box installation is temporary, the larger project, Dithyrambalina, will see a permanent “sound sculpture” installed. The final Music Box public performance took place in early June, 2012.

The very concept of musical houses inspires a sort of child-like glee. Who didn’t spend at least a little time during childhood pretending that various home objects were instruments? The Music Box is like a childhood dream that grew up and became something truly awesome. Now that the installation is over, it is only a matter of time before its successor, Dithyrambalina, wows New Orleans and the rest of the world.

The very best public art projects have a way of connecting us to the world around us. They make us look inward while opening ourselves to every other human on the planet. Few projects have had the kind of profound emotional impact that “Before I Die” by Candy Chang has had. This incredible interactive installation in New Orleans helped passers-by both share their innermost desires and uncover the desires of those around them.

(all images via: Candy Chang)

Before I Die was a large chalkboard installed on a long-abandoned house in New Orleans. After receiving permission from the property owner, the neighborhood association, the neighborhood residents and plenty of other authorities, Chang installed the chalkboard and set to work stenciling “Before I die I want to __________” over and over on the surface. Small baskets of colored chalk were attached so that passers-by could scrawl their wishes, dreams and innermost desires.

The initial setup was not even completed before people began stopping to share their stories with Chang. Once the crew was gone and the wall left to its own devices, people came in droves. They scribbled their hopes, their wishes, their desires and their fears. They unabashedly shared their most closely-held wants with the world. They joked, they tugged at heartstrings, they acted too cool for public art. But most of all, they opened themselves up.

The little revelations shared on the wall ranged from smarmy to sincere. They outlined desires to win back a lost wife, travel, see world peace, achieve inner peace, get rich, and make a difference, among hundreds of others. Once the spaces were all filled in, Chang erased the chalkboard and the neighborhood began again.

A simple question – What do you want to do before you die? – inspired passers-by to reflect momentarily on their own mortality and what they hope to achieve in the short time they have on this planet. By asking residents to share a little piece of themselves, this project brought a neighborhood and an entire city closer together. Chang has plans to take the installation to other cities in a bid to return some usefulness to abandoned places and encourage people to get involved.

The original installation has now been removed following the sale of the property. The new owners are fans of the project but in accordance with city regulations on blight had to commit to renovating the home as soon as possible. The building that went from a home to an urban abandonment to a beloved art project will now once again be a home. It seems a fitting fate for the structure on which so many people pinned their hopes and dreams.

(image via: howieluvzus)

When Banksy visited New Orleans in 2008, the renowned graffiti artist wasn’t just leaving behind his particular brand of social and political commentary on Hurricane Katrina and its effects on New Orleans culture – he was coming to do battle with the Gray Ghost. Two years later, only a single Banksy work has escaped the gray paint roller, and only because it’s behind plexiglass.

(image via: quazen)

Fred Radtke made it his mission to erase every bit of graffiti in the city long before Banksy’s arrival, sweeping down the street with his paint roller in hand. The anti-street-art crusader passed quietly through each neighborhood, obliterating all traces of spray paint with his own signature splotches of gray – hence his nickname. Some locals celebrated his dedication to keeping New Orleans clean, while others decried his assault against free expression.

(image via: fabricmag)

The Gray Ghost himself became the subject of some of Banksy’s New Orleans work, depicted as a bent figure blotting out color on the city’s walls. Where Banksy painted over huge swaths of Radtke’s gray paint, Radtke came back and painted over many of Banksy’s works of art (captured on video in one case) – without the permission of the property owners. Each Banksy reportedly increased the value of the building it adorned by $75,000 – $200,000.

(images via: aboxcarnamedruin, artbymags)

In 2009, Radtke finally went too far and painted over a commissioned mural. He pled no contest to a charge of criminal trespassing and agreed to get permission from property owners before performing his “community service.”

(image via: satanoid)

Not all of the Banksy obliteration came courtesy of the Gray Ghost. A man was actually photographed in the process of painting over ‘Boy on Life Preserver’. But regardless of who covered them, it seems that they’re all gone but ‘Rain Girl’, thanks to its protective plexiglass.

Craig Tracy is dedicated to creating surreal moments in time. Without the use of digital manipulation or photographic tricks, he creates dazzling body painting compositions that have elevated this particular type of artistic expression into the realm of fine art. He recently opened a gallery in New Orleans: the first gallery in the world dedicated to fine art body painting images.

Although he’s been an artist his whole life, it took Craig Tracy a number of years to truly find his passion. His first professional art job was airbrushing t-shirts in a shopping mall. This experience gave him the foundation that would later lead him to discover that he could – and should – paint on unusual surfaces.

After college, Tracy went on to become an illustrator. Like many artists, he found the work dreary and depressing. With no artistic freedom and no way to imbue the projects with his own style, he felt trapped. After retiring from illustration and declaring his freedom from stuffy commercial work, he discovered that body painting was the only type of art that truly made sense for him. Starting out painting faces, he progressed to painting bodies and eventually began showing and selling prints of his body paintings in his own gallery.

Since then, Craig Tracy’s work has developed into a full-time passion. His body paintings show the strength and aching fragility of human bodies, juxtaposed perfectly with the fluidity and transience of the pigments in which they are covered. In some paintings, the model blends with the background, creating a stunning illusion. In others, the painted model is the focus of the piece.  The above piece (bottom right), named “Butterfly” as a reference to the subtle butterfly disguised as a nose, features a woman as the leopard’s nose bridge. Her bottom forms the big cat’s top lips. The artist took 24 hours to paint the model and backdrop, pausing only for a one-hour nap.

Unlike Emma Hack, an artist who uses body paint to melt models into the background of her paintings, Tracy seems to celebrate the human form present in his work. Rather than hiding the model, he allows the curves and shadows of her body to interact with the entire piece, adding a depth, texture and powerful mystery to the paintings.

In doing this, he travels to a rather artistically dangerous zone. Just how much should the model’s form be allowed to influence the shape and direction of each piece? At what point does the body cross the line between canvas and subject? Each of Tracy’s paintings seem to play with these limits, exploring the human form as both the focus of the painting and an incidental part of it. Between those two extremes are many shades of grey, each of which is explored lovingly by the brush of the artist.

(all images used with permission of Craig Tracy)

The result of his playful and experimental approach to art and his obvious passion for what he does have made Craig Tracy one of the most respected contemporary body painting artists in the world. If you’d like to see more of the artist’s work, Craig Tracy Gallery can be found in New Orleans. It’s the only gallery in the world dedicated to fine art images of body paintings, and it also features videos of the body painting process for those interested in seeing the paintings unfold.

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward will never be the same again – and Brad Pitt is determined to make that a good thing. The actor’s Make it Right Foundation is in the process of building 150 affordable, green, storm-resistant homes designed by 21 star architects including Pugh & Scarpa, Adjaye Architects, MVRDV and Kieran Timberlake.

This charitable foundation is dedicated to creating a better, stronger community in the Lower 9th Ward, which was devastated by the 2005 hurricane. Participating architects were asked to create homes that are not only able to stand up to future storms, but are also non-toxic, earth-friendly, aesthetically advanced and in keeping with traditional New Orleans typologies, like the “shotgun” single-family home.

Adjaye Architects designed this single-family home to include an inverted pitched roof canopy that serves as both a solar and water collector and creates a shaded rooftop terrace. The reinforced structure has casement windows with hurricane impact glass, silkscreened cement board exterior panels and red cedar decking.

The MVRDV ‘bent house’ concept is an adapted shotgun house. The architects explain, “Bending the shot gun house up in two directions creates a carport at front and a shadow garden at the rear. The centre of the house contains the kitchen & bath- it is the lowest level. Stairs lead to a living room on the one side, and bedrooms on the other. The bedrooms and living room are above floodwater level. This means that escape would be possible to both the front porch and the rear porch.”

Architects Pugh & Scarpa have envisioned both single family homes and duplexes that emphasize shared community space, inspired by American patchwork quilting traditions with abstract geometric styles. In the single-family home, recycled wooden shipping pallets envelope the building to provide shade and texture. The duplex is characterized by an oversized front porch with a cooking pit that acts as a neighborhood hearth, encouraging interaction and community.

Kieran Timberlake’s design strives toward a mass customizable prototype that will eventually be prefabs assembled off-site locally with a range of options for interior layout, aesthetics and environmental systems. Both the ‘Garden’ prototype, which has a roof deck, sunscreens and mesh trellis, and the ‘Gable’ prototype with its covered rooftop area can be made from the same chassis.