They?ve been doing it forever now, but Creative Time is still the best arts organization in town. A 2001 rousting from their longtime spot in the Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage has proved to be something of a blessing for the group: As nomads, they?ve colonized everything from Times Square to MOMA to the Battery Maritime Building. The Creative Time signature is a public-art project that?s neither precious nor overbearing. Last year, the nonprofit sponsored Mike Nelson?s A Psychic Vacuum, a detailed and expansive labyrinth planted solidly in an unused wing of the Essex Street Market. This year, the group?s most high-profile project was David Byrne?s Playing the Building, which fused architecture, audience participation, and new music into a dynamic, groaning instrument, housed in yet another beautiful abandoned building. No one else in this city is paying anywhere near as close attention to New York?s physical, layered splendor; a certain development-mad mayor could take a lesson.