The sonic silo is our final stop in a week-long tour of public art in Canada:

A very curious experiment in music and sculpture is happening this summer in the Old Port of Montreal, and some of the effects can also be seen on an accompanying website.

[The User] is the name of an artistic collaboration by architect Thomas McIntosh and composer Emmanuel Madan. They have taken over the Silo #5 grain elevator in the Old Port of Montréal for an artistic experiment that "combines sound, architecture, and communication technologies to transform a significant landmark in the industrial cityscape of Montréal."

Silo #5B-1 used to store grain that came to Montreal by train and was shipped off to world markets from there. It was built in 1958, but by the mid-1990s most of Canada's grain was being exported via Vancouver, and the silo has been empty since then. Cited by Le Corbusier as a masterpiece of modern architecture, no one dared tear down the structure.

Now the building has been overtaken by the [The User], which is making use of the structure's acoustics by introducing sounds into the physical space. The sounds, according to the artists, are collected from "various communication technologies" around the world ... to create an instrument which blurs the boundaries between music, architecture and net art."

Some critics in Montreal have found this assemblage of technology and art to be confounding. There's been much muttering about the amount of public money poured into a project that isn't accessible to all. If we were to rate public art projects, it's definitely a far more complex installation than the simpleton Moose project in Toronto.

The public has been invited to contribute sounds to the silo, via telephone and the Internet. The sounds reverberate though the silo and are transformed due to an amazing echo, up to 20 seconds in duration. Also in the works are a series of concerts commissioned from national and international artists, to be broadcast at a later date on CBC Radio-Canada.

You can check out the details and hear for yourself:
Silophone

Look back on our week of coverage of public art in Canada: