Artist uses a drum to make his work striking

He was once a drummer in a school band, but Zheng Lu has now installed the 12-meter-high "musical instrument" at a solo exhibition in Shanghai.

The 38-year-old Beijing-based artist has strung about 10,000 aluminum plates together to create a high-rise structure in the shape of a tower. It stands in the middle of an exhibition hall in the Long Museum's West Bund space.

Nearby, a mechanical unit manipulated by computer programs keeps pulling up steel balls and dropping them on the aluminum structure. The falling balls then strike the plates to produce pleasant sounds.