*** CONGRATS TO CACHE ADDICT-MEL FOR THE FTF ***
When I was told I was one of the 4000 cachers to be given a virtual I began looking around Savannah to find something worthy. I discovered that while Savannah has lots of interesting places, they really weren’t good virtuals. In my mind, a virtual differs from a earth cache by not just being an interesting place, but also having something there to do or interact with. Savannah doesn’t have many of those (the 1 that I can think of and it was taken). I did have a couple places in mind tho, but as they are private property, I had to get permission. Then my company relocated me to the Charlotte area and I started looking here. What I found is perfect.
“Touch My Building” is an “urban musical instrument” by American sound artist and architect Christopher Janney, who works at the intersection of architecture and music. Some of his pieces are performances, some are installations, but most of them defy easy categorization. Many of them require a human element, like his master’s thesis project “Soundstair,” which uses photoelectric sensors and a sound sampler to make music as a person walks or dances along a set of steps.
“Touch My Building” was designed to encourage pedestrians to take a break and interact with their surroundings. It’s massive in scale, coating nearly the entire exterior of the nine-story parking building. The garage is covered in transparent blue and purple rectangles, connected to 36 30-foot-tall red fins. When the fins are touched, they light up and play music. But the building also has a mind of its own. Different tunes play automatically every hour and a “ghost” in the building will sometimes trigger random performances. (Janney says that this last feature allows the building to properly engage passersby in conversation. It’s saying hello.)
The trickiest, but most rewarding, way to converse with the “ghost” is to solve a puzzle. A plaque mounted on the side of the building directly in front of the posted coords lays out a riddle. If you are able to solve it, you get quite the show as long as the "ghost" is in a playful mood.
While the cache is open 24 hours a day, after 6:00 PM, the street parking is free, and since the fins light up, they and are more impressive at night.
In order to get credit for this cache, you must ....
1) post a picture of yourself in front of the building, and
2) find the emergency phone at posted coords and email the 3 digit number on the metal plate.
If you do not send these requirements, your log will sadly be deleted.
Virtual Reward - 2017/2018
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between August 24, 2017 and August 24, 2018. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards on the Geocaching Blog.