You know that tall building in downtown Shenzhen, the one near the Keyuan subway station on Line 2, that lights up as though its some kind of a rainbow-flavored equalizer? That may not be far from the truth.

There’s a secret code to tall buildings that flash lights. We know the Canada Life Building in Toronto, Canada organizes its flashing lights to tell us what the weather is. The CN Tower in Toronto projects a subliminal image of the patriotic Mountie with its flashing lights. Meanwhile, the Empire State Building is known to put on light shows that accompany various songs or festive times of the year. But the A8 building in downtown Shenzhen is something different.

The light show that we see actually represents something someone else is hearing. Specifically, music.

The flashing lights of the A8 building are designed to act as a visual representation of the sound waves heard in the songs being downloaded by A8′s own users. Seen during the day as an set of undulating ribbons (lucky number 8, the same as the number in a normal major/minor scale), the A8 building lights up at night to provide a light show that is based upon the song that is being downloaded from the A8 website.

The concept of associating music with sound is based upon the Scriabin keyboard in which each tone is given its own corresponding color. Here’s how Scriabin organized the twelve tones of Western music according to the circle of fifths:

This promotional video shows A8 company representatives explaining their vision of the building while ballet and jazz dancers are dancing to music that is decidedly not ballet nor jazz. At 1.46, the founder of UNIT Studio Yang Moyang explains the how the light show works:

The creation of this building is based upon the music theory such as the staff, the piano keyboard, and so on. To begin with, the volume is split into eight pieces, Then, the sound wave is generated on the surface of the building shaped like the theory of music waves, most like a series of dancing keyboards… I think this building itself is the most crazy composition in the world.

Here’s a Youtube video that shows the building in action:

This sounds really cool in theory, but it behooves us not to point out the blatant flaws in this otherwise perfectly geeky set-up.

While the music is split into eight components to be displayed visually (for a major/minor scale), there are 12 separate tones in Western music theory—sorry, country music, but not everything is in the key of A.

Secondly, the colored tones never move position from left to right, so it is perpetually purple/Eb on the left side of the building; this makes it difficult to visually group the tones together to “hear” harmonies and keys.

Worst of all for people who read staff music: the eight segmented tones (that represent a major/minor scale) are placed side by side in a circle of fifths and not sequential like the keyboard it supposely emulates.

It still looks cool, though. And we are still able to tell when it’s a quiet song.

Go have a look for yourself!
A8 Music Headquarters, #1002 Keyuan Road, Technology Park, Nanshan District, Shenzhen
深圳市南山区科技园科园路1002号

Photos: Shenzhen News, Gizmodo, Architecture Lab, MnemoTechnics