IAN BRILL

Uptown Reverberation is a site-specific installation which combines electronically processed sound with objects played as automatic percussive instruments. The piece was created for the Sage Building in Pittsburgh, a structure in the Uptown area which had been slated to be destroyed by the city as part of Civic Arena redevelopment. This municipal taking echos the historic destruction of the lower Hill District in the late 1950s. The musical score is a personal response to seeing the living space of friends taken away. It was performed in part on the building itself using a pneumatic system to electronically pulse puffs of air through the plumbing and found objects reclaimed from the basement. The percussive sounds are miked, improvisationally reprocessed, and amplified as an electronic echo. The visual elements address the question of a building which is still intact but which has inexorably begun its premature journey to rubble. The performance took place November 4, 2006 as part of the “In Lieu of Condemnation” event at 1029 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh.