Elliott Sharp and Dither Want Audience Participation, in Chalk

The ever-provocative guitarist/saxophonist/composer Elliott Sharp teams up with the New York-based Dither guitar quartet to perform at the Whitney Museum on Friday night August 13 at 7 p.m. They will be performing Christian Marclay’s Chalk Board, a piece that invites museum visitors to write on a giant chalk board and those musical notations/drawings/words/scribbles are then interpreted as a musical score by performers in the gallery.

• Check out the Christian Marclay chalk board and venue with this performance by pianist Anthony Coleman

Elliott Sharp has been a fixture of the New York downtown music scene since the 1970s, and has collaborated extensively with the likes of John Zorn and Christian Marclay. His omnivorous music-making has embraced and transformed just about every style that has permeated the performance halls and clubs of the East Village during these many years.

Dither has made a name for itself as an adventurous ensemble of performer-composers who live equally well in universities, galleries, clubs and concert halls. Sample their innovative sound in this performance of Eric KM Clark's exPAT: Deprivation Music No. 4 from a recent Bang on a Can Marathon.