If an iPod hooked up to six desktop speakers blares ‘Africa’ by Toto in the middle of the desert 24/7 and nobody is around to hear it, is the song still just the worst?
The answer is yes, and we now know this for a fact, thanks to Namibian-German artist Max Siedentopf.
His installation TOTO FOREVER consists of seven pillars, one bearing an mp3 player that contains only that song, and the rest bearing speakers blasting the song on loop in all directions. In the middle of nowhere. Forever.
You can get a taste of the TOTO FOREVER experience with this handy video, complete with wind-muffling background noise.
“[I] wanted to pay the song the ultimate homage and physically exhibit ‘Africa’ in Africa,” Siedentopf told the BBC.
“Some [Namibians] love it and some say it’s probably the worst sound installation ever. I think that’s a great compliment.”
It’s gonna take a lot to find it, though – Siedentopf isn’t telling anyone where it actually is.
The website for the exhibit includes a map labelled APPROXIMATE LOCATION OF INSTALLATION, with a very helpful dotted red line around the entire Namib Desert.
But at least the back-backed jackals, gemsboks and fog beetles of the Namib desert get to enjoy this round-the-clock recreation of your local sh**ty backpacker bar at 2am. Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.
Meanwhile, I can’t stop laughing at the image of a ragged lone traveller, lost in the desert and desperate for water, hearing a couple of synth notes on the burning breeze, stumbling over a sand dune towards the sound of possible civilisation, only to find nothing but a wind-weathered iPod playing this f**king song, over and over again, until the heat death of the universe and/or its lithium battery.
Sure hope it doesn’t get rained on.