Saturday (4/4) & Sunday (4/5)

We had very leisurely time over the weekend. On Saturday, Joyce & Gary found a few geocaches and did some necessary shopping to reinforce supplies for Sunday dinner! We visited with Jolene, Dan, Leah and Micah, watched a little tv and had a nice dinner from supplies!

Sunday was about putting together Easter baskets with goodies and then hiding them around Airbnb for each person to find. Then it was on to prepare the Easter dinner of ham, sweet potatoes, Paake’s carrots, and homemade rolls. It was a lovely dinner!

In the afternoon, we were treated to a family photograph by our licensed drone pilot (Micah) and edited by Gary.

Waiting until sunset, we made a journey to downtown Charlotte to find a special virtual geocache called “Touch My Building.” It 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.)