The xx remix did nicely separate the bass, coming up palpably but not too heavily out of the bottom of the sphere, from the voices around and above. For all the souped-up spiffiness of the Sonic Sphere, the programming on Saturday felt like a retread of artists who were more interesting when Alex Poots, the Shed’s artistic director, presented them during his stint at the Park Avenue Armory uptown. Levit, the following year, played Bach as part of an ornate concentration exercise orchestrated by Marina Abramovic. Both of them on Saturday were under 40 minutes, but I found myself getting antsy well before time was up. Perhaps the audiences at Burning Man, the techno-hippie hedonist bonanza in the Nevada desert where a Sonic Sphere was built last year, were more engrossed, experiencing it on harder drugs than the Coke Zero I’d had with dinner.

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Persons: Mari ”, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Alex Poots, Bach, Marina Abramovic Organizations: Armory, Perelman Performing Arts Center Locations: Levit, Nevada