Muzak!!

I went to the Haus Der Musik last night with Michelle. It was awesome! It's kinda like the science center, except it's only about sound. And, in a rare departure from the rest of Vienna, it's open late. And by late I mean 10 pm. But still...
Anyway, it was a lot of fun. It's a very modern musuem, it has a lot of "hands on" things, and it's heavily dependent on videos and computers. If you're in Vienna, I would say it's a must see.

This is not in the museum, it's in front of a jewerly store on Kratner Strasse.

Ok, all my pictures loaded backwards, because I totally forgot and uploaded them chronologically, so this is a room that I really liked the design of. It was also the last room we were in.
I have no clue what this was or what the point of it was, but at this point I was wasting time. We had come to the end of the "Great Composers section" and there was a game where you get to conduct the Vienna Phillharmonic Orchestra. It was actually pretty awesome, you get up on a replica of the stand, and there's a huge screen with the orchestra on it. Then you pick your song, and the baton has a laser in it, so this sensor under the screen picks up how it's moving and it uses that to actually conduct the speed and loudness of the orchestra as they "play" the song you picked. If you do really badly one of the members will stand up and yell at you. Anyway, me and Michelle had to wait as a group of like 9 younger girls played this game. Every one of them had to play a song all the way through. So we were just standing around wasting time for a good 20-30 mins. Finally Michelle gets a turn. At this point this huge group of kids shows up, who you will hear more about later, and so they're all milling around me and Michelle. Michelle gets almost through the song and then the orchestra guy yells at her. We all laugh and she give the baton to me. But, apparently her turn is not over, because the screen doesn't reset, it just keeps going with her song. So I get about 10 secs of time. So I try to start over, and at this point, the kids around me start tapping me on the shoulder and telling me that they want a turn, am I done yet. I'm so mad at these kids!! Plus, they are making fun of me for speaking English, (which has happened before, when a group of kids about the same age followed me and Michelle around for awhile at the House of Terror making fun of us for speaking english. What is with kids in Europe? I normally have no problem with middle school age kids, but seriously- what is with them?). So, I realize that even if I try to stay here and finish the turn I deserve, they are kinda sucking all the fun out of the game. I pointedly hand the baton to a girl who is not part of their group, and tell them "Oh, sorry, I was only waiting for 20 mins for my turn so I just thought that maybe I could have an entire song." Sarcasm is wasted on them.
That was a long story. Anyway, after that there luckily wasn't much else to see (nothing interesting anyway) so we left soon after that.

A chair designed by Otto Wagner. This is when we were killing time.
Me sitting in the chair.
Aww! Blogger, you're killing me putting my pics up backwards. I'm just going to pretend this is in the correct order. Read it backwards if it bothers you.
More set rendering, from the 1950s, but these were in the Beethovan room, and I don't even know what they're for, so they're not as cool.
A painting of Requiem.

The last of the composer's rooms. I didn't recognize the name of this composer, but the room was awesome.
I know this is a bad picture, but I would like to point out that 1) a museum is using a scrim in its display and 2) this museum is actually using 2 scrims, there's a regular one, then one with a picture on it, then a picture on the back wall, a part of which is being lit up right now. It was pretty awesome.
It's kinda like a model, but way older.

A stone masons book. Pretty cool.

I'm sad they never show the background with the giant eye. That was cool.
I know these little models aren't nearly as wonderful as actually seeing it live, but its a start.
The opening scene. That's a dragon.


The temple that rises from the floor and then pours out water.
And these are pictures of pictures of the how the set would look during different scenes. Eh, I take what I can get.
It's a model of the set of The Magic Flute!! How awesome for me, because I loved the set and really wished I could get pictures of it. As much as I absolutely loved this production, it looks almost simple next to the older set renderings.






I think this one is my favorite.

Ok, I get to be a nerdy theatre person for a little bit, because I was so excited to see these. We were in the Great Composers section of the museum, and each composer has a room and you get a free audio tour and such. Well, in the Motzart room, there were these beautiful pictures in the center of the room. Why are they here? Because these are the set renderings of an actuall performance of the The Magic Flute from the 1800s. I cannot belive it. First off, they're just beautiful. Second, it's really cool that I get to see such old set renderings. Thirdly, are you kidding me? It goes on to say this was "unsurpassed" in elaborateness. Yah, I can see that. I cannot even believe these are sets. The had to have been edited down, but I really hope they weren't because they're awesome. And keep in mind, while just one of these would be impressive, they are all for the same opera. They had to go on and off stage. Ridiculous.

Listening to the sounds inside. This wall was cool. The best part was they had little half circles in the walls with globes painted on the inside, and if you stuck you head in you could hear what it was like at different places, for example standing on a corner of Broadway in New York, or in San Marco's Piazza in Venice. Also cool were little speakers you could listen to that had different space sounds. My favorite one of those was Jupiter. I didn't even know Jupitor had a noise.Upstairs, there was a whole floor of rooms that you go into and listen to different noises and see the effects, or play on interactive computer games where you get to manipulate your own voice, or hear notes that don't really exist. It was awesome. But, there was this really annoying group of kids that had overrun the place, and they were yelling and screaming (for NO reason) which made it really hard to hear, which made being there pointless. Also, they kept trying to block us from entering rooms. And they would just push right in front of us if we were at a computer. They were so annoying. We hate them. So, we just chilled on the lower level for awhile untill they were gone, taking pictures and playing the Vienna Waltz dice game over and over.
There were a lot of exhibits that went over things I learned in my physics class. It was cool. I especially liked the one where I got to find my personal threshold of hearing. It was 15000 hz. Not bad. Especially since the headphones didn't block out the rest of the sound in the room.

We saw this and Michelle said "It's like we're in Harry Potter."
This is my shoutout to the David Duchovny look alike who's on the magazine thats in all the U-Bahns. So basically, this picture means nothing to anyone reading this except me.