Just a quick note to say that the piece I wrote on Montreal's alternative performance spaces (for the Gazette) was published today. It is available in print around the city (hurry! hurry!), or on the Gazette website for a week (requiring free registration after that).
However, I decided to also throw the full article up online, so if you are interested in reading it, please follow the link. I had a good time writing this and think it could warrant a much longer, more exhaustive piece at some point in the future. A future where I am not as busy and sleepy.
Let me know your thoughts on this article. I realize that there are all sorts of performance spaces that I didn't even mention (both legal and not), but must stress again how word-count became a factor in the overall presentation of the piece. The key was to keep the piece tight and focused.
I should also say again how working with the Gazette editors has been a professional and clean experience, as it continues to be notable. Also, the fact that my girlfriend is a genius and makes me look much smarter than I actually am.
Enjoy the article.
Showing posts with label silo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label silo. Show all posts
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Circuit Bent Casio Played in Silo Number 5
On a whim I thought it would be fun to play the little piece from the modded Casio through the Silophone, located in downtown Montreal.The Silophone is an interesting thing: essentially it is an abandoned grain silo, outfitted with microphones and speakers, with an internet connection. The idea is to play pieces in the grain silo, and take advantage of the natural acoustics and reverberations that colour the sound. The internet connection takes this experiment one step further: it allows home users from around the globe to upload their audio and play it back to themselves through the Silophone.
To hear the modded Casio through the Silophone, visit the site, click the 'play the silophone' tab, and find the track by Faunaflage, posted on March 1st (Faunaflage is a project name I am working under right now).
Bear in mind that the Silophone uses RealPlayer, which is easily the worst file player possible (though one of the most common, internationally). Also, take note that it will take about 1 minute or so for the sound to come back to you. It may, in fact seem like nothing is actually happening, but I can confirm it does work. I think sometimes you have to wait for other files to stop playing first, too.
I thought this was an interesting experiment. All the sharp trebles in the piece are muted, and the thick, glitchy organ is rounded off and warmed up considerably. Also it is a very cool thing, to hear your stuff played at some remote industrial location downtown. Playing it back once I heard some random dude in the building talking. The unexpected happenstance of an experiment like this.
Give it a try. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.
(photos provided by the Shearwood photo essay in The Reservoir section)
Thursday, March 31, 2005
They Just Need Some Space
They Just Need Some Space
Alternative performance venues are fostering tight-knit communities and contributing to the artistic diversity of the city
SCOTT W. GRAY, Freelance
Published in the Montreal Gazette: August 2, 2007
Clinton the cat has just returned from a traumatic visit to the veterinarian, and his human caretakers, Sarah Byrnes and Michelle Williams, make sure I am gentle with him as they welcome me into their home.
They live at St. Laurent Blvd. and Prince Arthur St. in a building full of converted studios, in a long loft that boasts a typical urban domesticity - except that it regularly doubles as the art venue and performance space known as My Hero Gallery.
The two women established My Hero last year to offer emerging visual artists a place to display their work outside the traditional gallery spaces of the city, and to foster community.
"There's so much energy in this city toward independent music," Byrnes says. "I wanted to take that energy and combine it with art. This gallery is about merging art and music together and then getting that energy to be fun."
"We wanted to use the space." Williams continues. "We wanted to do something that interested both of us - being that Sarah could curate art shows and I could do music shows once in a while."
The two women praise the community that develops around the events they host in this unusual performance space. Every month they welcome strangers into their home, charging no admission and operating on a BYOB bar policy to showcase talent they believe in.
"Smaller venues create communities," Byrnes says. "An intimate show is priceless. Going to a show where you are close to the band and you are interacting with them as they are interacting with you - it's something that's memorable. It moves you."
In fact, the idea of providing a space for community to gather, whether physically or virtually, recurs frequently when discussing Montreal's alternative performance spaces with their curators.
Emmanuel Madan and his colleague Thomas McIntosh (known collectively as The User) are the creative force behind the Silophone in Montreal's Old Port. The Silophone uses recording and playback equipment installed in an enormous, empty grain silo built on the Lachine Canal in 1903. The project was designed to allow audiences to explore the natural acoustics of this abandoned space, albeit from a distance.
The public can send files across the Internet, speak across a phone line, or use the "Sonic Observatory" (a permanent installation The User has built on the boardwalk of the Old Port) to hear their voices reverberating inside the giant metal grain silo.
"When we got access, what we wanted to do was bring the public inside because it's such an amazing space," Madan says. "The thing that we were attracted to when we first explored the building was what it sounds like inside. But, unsurprisingly, the Old Port wouldn't allow the general public in. So, what we chose to do instead was bring the acoustics of the space outside to people in other places."
Audio files are uploaded to The Silophone's website, www.silophone.net, from all over the world, and remain there for others to play back through the space. By adding files to the sound bank, audiences can participate in the Silophone's international community.
Madan says that we turn to non-traditional venues for culture because the number of "conventional spaces where people can play and gather" is limited.
"Not to say there aren't concert spaces in Montreal," he says, "but for a certain kind of music and art, I think that you see a lot of marginal spaces being reclaimed because there are a lot of those spaces."
Guy Sprung is a firm believer in community gathering spaces. His theatre company, Infinitheatre, operates out of the converted Bain St. Michel at Maguire and St. Dominique Sts., a space that was initially the community bathhouse when it was built in 1911.
As we speak, Sprung shows me renovation plans for the pool, adjusting various pieces in a cardboard mock-up of the Bain St. Michel that is sitting on his desk. With a movement of his hand, the building's interior is exposed, and a tiny stage is neatly fitted into the pool's deep end.
Relying on three-month contracts from the city to stage performances, and facing the realities of an aging building, the converted Bain St. Michel operates on a fairly provisional lease. However, Sprung is undaunted by the challenges.
"I think it's amazingly flexible and the idea of it redefining itself as a community gathering place is so neat," he says. "This would have an edge - you would walk in and your mindset would be shifted and you would maybe see things from a different perspective.
"It goes back to something, you know," Sprung adds, carefully putting the roof back on the cardboard model of the pool. "It would be the area's little gathering point for the community."
For information on My Hero Gallery, go to http://www.myherogallery.ca/. For the Silophone, go to http://www.silophone.net/. For Infinitheatre, go to http://www.infinitheatre.com/.
Alternative performance venues are fostering tight-knit communities and contributing to the artistic diversity of the city
SCOTT W. GRAY, Freelance
Published in the Montreal Gazette: August 2, 2007
Clinton the cat has just returned from a traumatic visit to the veterinarian, and his human caretakers, Sarah Byrnes and Michelle Williams, make sure I am gentle with him as they welcome me into their home.
They live at St. Laurent Blvd. and Prince Arthur St. in a building full of converted studios, in a long loft that boasts a typical urban domesticity - except that it regularly doubles as the art venue and performance space known as My Hero Gallery.
The two women established My Hero last year to offer emerging visual artists a place to display their work outside the traditional gallery spaces of the city, and to foster community.
"There's so much energy in this city toward independent music," Byrnes says. "I wanted to take that energy and combine it with art. This gallery is about merging art and music together and then getting that energy to be fun."
"We wanted to use the space." Williams continues. "We wanted to do something that interested both of us - being that Sarah could curate art shows and I could do music shows once in a while."
The two women praise the community that develops around the events they host in this unusual performance space. Every month they welcome strangers into their home, charging no admission and operating on a BYOB bar policy to showcase talent they believe in.
"Smaller venues create communities," Byrnes says. "An intimate show is priceless. Going to a show where you are close to the band and you are interacting with them as they are interacting with you - it's something that's memorable. It moves you."
In fact, the idea of providing a space for community to gather, whether physically or virtually, recurs frequently when discussing Montreal's alternative performance spaces with their curators.
Emmanuel Madan and his colleague Thomas McIntosh (known collectively as The User) are the creative force behind the Silophone in Montreal's Old Port. The Silophone uses recording and playback equipment installed in an enormous, empty grain silo built on the Lachine Canal in 1903. The project was designed to allow audiences to explore the natural acoustics of this abandoned space, albeit from a distance.
The public can send files across the Internet, speak across a phone line, or use the "Sonic Observatory" (a permanent installation The User has built on the boardwalk of the Old Port) to hear their voices reverberating inside the giant metal grain silo.
"When we got access, what we wanted to do was bring the public inside because it's such an amazing space," Madan says. "The thing that we were attracted to when we first explored the building was what it sounds like inside. But, unsurprisingly, the Old Port wouldn't allow the general public in. So, what we chose to do instead was bring the acoustics of the space outside to people in other places."
Audio files are uploaded to The Silophone's website, www.silophone.net, from all over the world, and remain there for others to play back through the space. By adding files to the sound bank, audiences can participate in the Silophone's international community.
Madan says that we turn to non-traditional venues for culture because the number of "conventional spaces where people can play and gather" is limited.
"Not to say there aren't concert spaces in Montreal," he says, "but for a certain kind of music and art, I think that you see a lot of marginal spaces being reclaimed because there are a lot of those spaces."
Guy Sprung is a firm believer in community gathering spaces. His theatre company, Infinitheatre, operates out of the converted Bain St. Michel at Maguire and St. Dominique Sts., a space that was initially the community bathhouse when it was built in 1911.
As we speak, Sprung shows me renovation plans for the pool, adjusting various pieces in a cardboard mock-up of the Bain St. Michel that is sitting on his desk. With a movement of his hand, the building's interior is exposed, and a tiny stage is neatly fitted into the pool's deep end.
Relying on three-month contracts from the city to stage performances, and facing the realities of an aging building, the converted Bain St. Michel operates on a fairly provisional lease. However, Sprung is undaunted by the challenges.
"I think it's amazingly flexible and the idea of it redefining itself as a community gathering place is so neat," he says. "This would have an edge - you would walk in and your mindset would be shifted and you would maybe see things from a different perspective.
"It goes back to something, you know," Sprung adds, carefully putting the roof back on the cardboard model of the pool. "It would be the area's little gathering point for the community."
For information on My Hero Gallery, go to http://www.myherogallery.ca/. For the Silophone, go to http://www.silophone.net/. For Infinitheatre, go to http://www.infinitheatre.com/.
photo by dave sidaway - for the gazette
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