Installations, performances at Silo City

The mostly abandoned grain elevators of Silo City are an integral part of a presentation of new experimental music and sound art taking place next weekend sponsored by UB’s Center for 21st Century Music and organized by a UB graduate student.

“Decay/Reverberate: Site Specific Sound at Silo City” will open June 11 with a VIP preview of select installations and performances, then open to the public on June 12 and run through June 14 at Silo City, 200 Childs St., Buffalo.

It features experimental art by local, national and international artists — both emerging and established — in which the historical, social, architectural and acoustic features of the Silo City site “function not as a passive background, but instead play an active, integral role” in the work, according to Colin Tucker, a PhD student in music composition and curator of Null Point, the experimental arts organization that is presenting the exhibition.

Featured pieces, Tucker says, “build new musical and sonic syntaxes from the ground up in dialogue with the site, revealing Silo City in new and unexpected ways.”

For example, in “Filter Index,” artist Shannon Werle activates the reverberant interior of the Marine A grain elevator by popping balloons positioned at carefully chosen locations throughout the silo. Her project, Tucker says, “represents the culmination of months of research into the relationship between a sound’s location and its tone color.”

A few dozen balloons placed in what Tucker calls “acoustically unique positions” will be popped in succession, “making manifest the unique acoustic architecture of the silo,” he says.

The history of the grain elevators plays out in composer Lena Nietfeld’s performance-installation. Five performers are dispersed throughout Marine A and use shovels and brooms — tools originally used at the site — to create sounds by scraping and tapping the silos’ metal hoppers and concrete walls. The piece has no predetermined score, “but instead codifies a roadmap of the performers’ actions and reactions to the sounds they hear at a given moment,” Tucker says. “The exact shape of the piece cannot be predicted ahead of time,” he explains, “and will depend considerably upon choices made by each performer and also by real-time environmental sounds at the site.”

Numerous UB graduate students, faculty and alumni are taking part in “Decay/Reverberate.” Creating new pieces specifically for the event are Tucker; Matt Sargent, a PhD student in music composition; Daniel Bassin, adjunct assistant professor and conductor of the UB Symphony Orchestra; and alumnus Tom Stoll, PhD in composition. Performing in the event are Zane Merritt, PhD student in music composition, and alumni Bob Fullex and Jason Bauers, both MM in percussion performance, and John Bacon, PhD in composition.

Tickets for the event will be sold only at the door. Day passes are $10 for general admission and $8 for students; a festival pass, which does not include the VIP preview, are $25 and $20.

For the full schedule of events, visit Null Point’s website.