I could give a repeat performance in my parents' basement

In a loft that likely was itself a relic of a previous era, one of horn-rimmed glasses and slide rules, Diane Labrosse opened an installation/performance last night called "d'Espèces en voie de disparition." The idea was not simply to dust off obsolete mechanical objects for the mere nostalgic "hey, remember this?" factor, but to use them in new ways to create a musico-theatrical event.

In the installation, cassette-playing answering machines warbled at each other in one room while dot-matrix printers chatted in another and reel-to-reel magnetic tapes spun nervously. These objects are, of course, not really that "old"; they're simply out of date by today's standards of digitized everything. With the well-placed black lights, a trip through the installation felt like a visit to a small appliance graveyard.

The performance involved human manipulation of some of these old-school machines for musical and visual effect. In one of the nine stages, three "secretaries" punched away violently on typewriters in front of a series of projected images of inky keys striking paper; in another, a "scientist" in a white lab coat and goggles pretended to observe the noisy effects of electric razors, hand stamps, coffee grinders and wooden rulers. Another movement, consisting of twenty electric coffee percolators humming and grunting and steaming in polyphony, had no human interaction at all.

It's hard to escape a certain reverence for the old forgotten tools. These were machines that felt and behaved like true machines: their metal and gears sat on your desk or counter like a miniature factory, waiting for someone to operate them with skill and a little muscle. Today's push-button, plastic, made-in-China disposible junk will likely make lousy musical instruments except in their destruction. My touchtone phone doesn't make the same satisfying jingle when I slam the receiver as a rotary would.

But while the performance was interesting for its conceptual reuse of discarded objects, much of the auditory aspect lacked musicality. It's acceptable to play these tools dryly to call attention to their cold functionality, but it seemed as though Labrosse and others were striving for a little more. The experimentation was there, but some of the improvisations (e.g., the staticky radio knob-twiddling and the mic feedback on a swinging vacuum hose) didn't seem to add much to the set-up. Still, the show is worth checking out.