The term “elevator music” is often considered a pejorative, a way to scorn milquetoast melodies that fit neatly into the background. But one San Francisco creative recently reinvented the term, using some of the city’s most iconic elevators as means to create beautiful soundscapes.
Tucker Bryant is an SF-based conceptual artist who works as a keynote speaker on creativity. One of his latest projects was Flight Roulette, in which a group gathers at San Francisco International Airport with their carry-on and a random person is selected to fly to a surprise location.
Bryant found inspiration for his latest project in the grandiose lobby of the Hyatt Regency San Francisco by the Embarcadero, specifically the hypnotic elevators that appear like art deco paper lanterns ascending and descending inside the world’s largest hotel lobby. He purchased five cellphones from a secondhand electronics store for $366, then hid them in the corner of the five elevators. Using an app that measured pressure, Bryant monitored the movement of the elevators over the course of an hour. Two of the phones were found by hotel guests and turned in to the staff, who were bemused when Bryant told them about his project.
“I think the person who worked at the hotel was kind of confused, and maybe a little bit suspicious when I first was like, ‘I have two phones that were in two elevators,’” Tucker said. “But then I kind of explained to him what I was doing, and he was like, ‘OK, fine.’”…