Immersive Audio Experience for Dustin Grella’s Midnight Moment

Dustin Grella, Sunday Morning, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Times Square Arts.

Visitors can listen to an artist-curated soundtrack synchronized with Grella’s animated artwork across Times Square’s electronic billboards.

Nightly October 11:57pm–12am
Times Square | Between 41st and 49th Streets

Times Square Arts, the largest public platform for contemporary performance and visual arts, invites audiences to experience Dustin Grella’s Sunday Morning with an accompanying, artist-designed audio program. On view nightly from October from 11:57pm to midnight, the three-minute animated film transforms more than 100 electronic billboards across Times Square into a nostalgic meditation on New York City’s landmarks, everyday rituals, and fleeting moments of connection.

For the first time, audiences can listen to a curated soundtrack designed by Grella to accompany the Midnight Moment in real time. While Times Square’s electronic billboards traditionally present the program without a shared audio component, visitors can access the soundtrack on their phones at tsq.org/sundaymorning, no app or download required. Once activated, the music plays in sync with the animation overhead, inviting viewers to experience the work through both sight and sound.

“Times Square brings its own orchestra of sound, but half of what we experience in a film is the audio. When it’s done right, it goes completely unnoticed, so I wanted to be intentional,” said artist Dustin Grella. “I’ve always loved listening to music on city sidewalks. It gives me an odd sense of solitude while bringing the individual elements into greater focus, and I hope that bringing audio to a venue this enormous can offer that same solitude without losing the feeling of profound grandeur.”

Grella’s Sunday Morning draws on twenty years of animation to celebrate the everyday beauty of an ever-evolving New York City. Hand-drawn in chalk pastel on a slate blackboard salvaged from an 1800s schoolhouse, the film moves through familiar city landmarks and intimate scenes, from a subway platform and an East Village stoop to Madison Square Park,  Fifth Avenue, Doyers Street, Tribeca, and Battery Square Park.

Built from more than four hours of footage and choreographed into a three-minute loop, Sunday Morning captures the fleeting instances of connection and stillness that emerge amid the city’s constant motion. The accompanying soundtrack extends Grella’s exploration of the city, creating an opportunity for audiences to engage with the work in a new sensory dimension.

ABOUT DUSTIN GRELLA
Dustin Grella is an animator whose work attempts to glean glimpses of colorful insight into the seemingly mundane. His films have screened at Cannes, Sundance, MoMA, and have been published in The New York Times Op-docs. His film “Prayers for Peace” screened at almost two hundred festivals worldwide and won over forty awards internationally. He has written and mailed himself a letter every day for the past twenty years and has over 7,000 sealed letters neatly filed and categorized. He is currently in production for the “Animation Hotline,” a series of micro-animations where he uses crowd-sourced voicemail messages for content.

ABOUT TIMES SQUARE ARTS
Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world’s most iconic urban places. Through the Square’s electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance’s own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators, such as Charles Gaines, Joan Jonas, Jeffrey Gibson, Pamela Council, Mel Chin and Kehinde Wiley, to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a cultural district and place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the arts program ensures these qualities remain central to the district’s unique identity.

Support for Midnight Moment is provided in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and the Times Square Advertising Coalition.

Midnight Moment is made possible by the Times Square Advertising Coalition, ABC SuperSign, American Eagle, Big Outdoor, Branded Cities, Clear Channel, Coca-Cola, Diversified, Express, Heritage Outdoor Media, KEVANI, Levi’s, LG, Line Friends, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Midtown Financial, Morgan Stanley, New Tradition, Outfront, Paramount, Prudential, RXR, Sensory Interactive, Sephora, Sherwood Equities, Show + Tell, Silvercast, Swatch, TSX, and T-Mobile.