HUMBOLDT — An musician has turned the Humboldt Historic Water Tower into a instrument.
Jen Reimer is a Montreal-based sound artist who has made art from unique soundscapes in cities all over the world. She discovered the Humboldt Water Tower while she was looking for accessible “audible oddities” across the country for a project. During the pandemic, she found that the Humboldt water tower's atmosphere, architectural and acoustic qualities made for the perfect site.
In May 2022, Reimer spent three days recording the sound of the wind as it activated the resonant frequencies of the tower. The tower became a resonant filter, transforming the wind's movement into musical tones, timbre, rhythms, and subsonic vibrations.
“There were musical tones, harmonics, textures and rhythms that emerged,” she said. “I experimented with playing the recordings back through loudspeakers and tactile transducers that vibrated the material structure of the tower, and I could feel the vibrations of the sound physically.”
She went on to develop a digital musical instrument made from recordings of the tower. The instrument filters and enhances these sounds to reveal musical qualities.
On Thursday, Aug. 31, Reimer will perform the piece she created with the tower, Song of Air, live, using loudspeakers and tactile transducers that vibrate the material structure of the tower. The performance will be held the following day every 30 minutes from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., and from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Reimer received a Bachelor of Music from the University of Alberta in 2006 and a Graduate Diploma in music at Concordia University in 2010. Her and Los Angeles-based musician, Max Stein, have turned the unlikeliness of locales into instruments
“During the pandemic I developed a composition in an abandoned tunnel in my neighbourhood and recently performed it in a 32-speaker dome. Max and I have created performances in tunnels in Montreal, a train station in Winnipeg, and more recently, inside a water reservoir in Zurich.”
To learn more about Reimer’s process, the Humboldt and District Museum is holding a reception at the Gallery at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 30.
Her website about the project can be found at songofair.com.
