Carnegie Mellon University

Subsurface

Music + Art Go Deep
at Festival in the Mine

by Julianne Mattera

For the second consecutive year, Carnegie Mellon University students illuminated the dark corridors and winding passageways of a limestone mine with art installations, musical performances and costumed movement.

"SubSurface: Site-Specific Sight & Sound,” a one-hour interdisciplinary festival, drew about 250 attendees to the inactive mine in Brady’s Bend, Armstrong County. The mine is estimated to be twice the size of the world’s largest building.

"The space challenges students to rethink performance spaces and how music is presented."

Jesse Stiles
Assistant Professor, School of Music

Photo of student's silhouette surrounded by orange-red light.

Students from Scott Andrew’s Activated Anamorphs class added an interactive element to this year’s festival. Their movement-based performance and costumes reflected aspects of underground lifeforms or objects, such as angler fish, fossils and bats. Students from Concept Studio: Space and Time also contributed inflatable, projected, shadow-based and mobile artworks.

“It’s something that takes people out of their day-to-day life and gives them an exciting experience,” said Andrew, a multimedia artist and adjunct professor in CMU’s School of Art.

Students walking from the dark into the colorful lights of Subsurface.
Photo of a performance artist at Subsurface.

“It’s about creating a surreal experience for a viewer that could maybe catapult them into another way of thinking.”

Scott Andrew
Adjunct Professor, CMU School of Art

Photo of a Subsurface performance artist covered in blue lights..
Photo of person bathed in teal light, with the top half of their body hidden in the granite wall and the bottom half wearing shiny silver pants and shoes.
Photo of an inflatable sculpture illuminated by blue light.

The Activated Anamorphs moved in character to the music performed by IDeATe’s Exploded Ensemble and the musical group Bombici. The musicians, in turn, improvised in response to the movements.

Jesse Stiles, co-organizer and an assistant professor at CMU's School of Music and IDeATe, said the limestone mine is a place where students can reinvent their landscape and themselves — altering how they sound and appear.

“You have to rethink sound and articulation of sound. That’s a great musical exercise,” said Stiles.

Photo of band wearing outfits with long strips of fabric dangling from them, bathed in magenta light.

“For students, the real educational value is that they are literally rethinking everything because there’s no infrastructure for them.”

Jesse Stiles
Assistant Professor, CMU School of Music

Man in dark lighting, playing a keyboard that glows blue, with white shapes projected on him and the limestone wall in the background.
Man playing brass instrument and wearing animal hat, bathed in green light.
Two students playing instruments, bathed in blue and green lights.
Man playing brass instrument covered in light blue rope lights with purple light in the background.
Man turning knobs, creating electronic music for the festival.
Students and faculty from CMU's College of Fine Arts (School of Art, School of Music, BXA Intercollege Degree Programs, Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry), School of Comupter Science and Integrative Design, Arts and Technology (IDeATe) Network put on the one-hour festival on Dec. 1, 2018 in Brady's Bend in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania. Mine owner Daniel Bruce (Tepper 1998) and his parents are CMU alumni. Bruce owns Brady's Bend Corporation.
Photo of the limestone mine in blue lights, with the silhouette of a person walking away from the camera.