By any standards, Ryoji Ikeda has been given an all-access pass worthy of rock star status: A pair of 40-foot tall screens for his black-and-white visuals; all 55,000 square feet of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall to fill with his stripped-down, sonic sounds; and the blessing of the Park Avenue Armory’s president and executive producer, Rebecca Robertson, to get loud.

Unconfirmed reports of a giant starfish washing up on Scolt Head Island, a sandy spit of land off the Norfolk Coast in England, sent Anita Bruce, a textile artist and amateur zoologist, out combing the shoreline.

A bald, bearded guy wearing a women’s mesh bathing suit and hot-pink spectacles showed up one day on a pair of blue steel doors on Crosby Street. By the mirth in his glance, his coy little grin, he knew the reactions he provoked and loved every minute of it.