Local artists' sound sculpture turns BART trains into music

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Local artists built the instrument, but BART plays the music.

Transbay Tubes is a sound sculpture created by an intergenerational trio of Bay Area artists that recently debuted at tiat gallery in San Francisco as part of a time.place exhibition.

The sculpture is tuned to the rhythm of the BART system. It listens continuously to live train data from 511.org, and each time a BART train enters the Transbay Tube, the artwork answers: A light flashes the color of the train's line, and one of three tubes generates a resonant hum. Train by train, the movement of BART is translated into a subtle, unfolding score.

The piece is composed of a small light that shifts between red, yellow, and green and three tubes of different lengths. Inside, electronics pull live data from 511.org, cueing the sculpture to activate as a train enters the Transbay Tube. First, the light flashes, then one of the tubes generates sound.

"The Tube has a voice we've always heard but never really listened to," said shm garanganao almeda, who came up with the idea for the piece. "With Transbay Tubes, that voice is no longer background noise; it's a song beneath the city."

Shm connected these ideas to code, collaborating with local artists Oliver DiCicco and Sudhu Tewari. Sudhu built the circuitry that translates the 511.org data and activates the sculpture. Oliver designed and constructed the musical tubes, known as Rijke tubes, which produce sound when electricity runs through a coiled wire, heating the air inside. As the hot air rises to the top of the tube, cold air floods the bottom, creating convection currents that vibrate at a certain frequency, generating a tone.

Transbay Tubes reframes the experience of riding through the Tube. Every rider is part of the composition. Infrastructure becomes instrument.

"When I'm on BART, I feel like I'm part of this vast movement of people," shm said. "With this piece, I wanted to make that movement audible, to show that every journey is a note in a larger composition."

The Transbay Tube is one of the world's most groundbreaking, remarkable feats of engineering. Yet for most riders, it registers as little more than a brief stretch of darkness between stations. The sculpture forces viewers to slow down, to envision the invisible, to reconsider the routine.

Working on the sculpture gave Sudhu "this crazy sensation of having a really deep connection to BART," he said.

"I was sitting there at my kitchen table waiting for the trains to come by, and shm and I were working at the same time so I'd text them, 'OMG, I just saw a train go through.' And they would say, 'OMG, I just saw a train go through.' It was like a friend lamp that connected us because we were paying attention to the BART trains in real time."

During the time.place exhibition opening at tiat, the effect of the sculpture was visceral. As people clustered around the sculpture, they shifted their behavior, pausing conversations mid-sentence every time a train activated the piece.

While they waited for the next train, people talked about BART: where they ride, what lines they take, how the system shapes their daily lives.

"Transbay Tubes provides a lesson in anticipation and patience," said Oliver. "And it made the Transbay Tube feel alive for those of us in its presence."

By the time you step away from Transbay Tubes, BART feels different. Not just a way to get from one place to another, but a rhythm, a pulse, a shared experience unfolding in real time.

"Public transit is about connection," shm said. "This piece makes that connection sensory."

Tiat gallery's time.place exhibition concluded in April, but the artists are already imagining a larger iteration of the sculpture - this time with four tubes to incorporate the beloved-though unintentionally omitted Blue Line - and searching for new spaces to exhibit.

Future iterations will stay true to the ethos of the original: infrastructure as art, motion transformed into light and tone and sensation.