An installation “Thirty Three Sounds: The Alphabet of St. Petersburg Experiment” opened on September 10 on the square near the western façade of Manege. The street space of the historical center of St. Petersburg became not just a background, but a natural habitat of noises. The concert and exhibition project is open until October 6; there are also performances of St. Petersburg musicians held on weekends.

The project is a catalogue of the most significant sound phenomena of St. Petersburg: from the horn orchestra to the graphic sound, from the shot of the cruiser “Aurora” to Shostakovich’s opera “The Nose”, from the invention of the radio to noise experiments of the 90s. The sounding letters of this alphabet are the starting point, they become words on the language of sound art, the art of sound of nowadays.

The pavilion “Thirty Three Sounds” includes exhibition spaces and a stage for performances. It’s made in the form of a cochlea – the central part of the huge organ of hearing, which is the city itself – and at the same time a snail shell: putting an ear to it, one can hear echoes of the sound oceans of our time.

The rooms of the pavilion feature objects and installations inspired by the experiments of the 20th century and forming a common sound space. That is a gallery of spatial acousmatic compositions of Russian media artists; many of them were created specially for this exhibition. The project participants are Andrej Smirnov, Oleg Makarov, Dmitry :vtol: Morozov, Sergey Filatov, Alexander Senko, Andrej Popovsky, Igor Potsukailo, Andrej Bundin, Yulia Glukhova, Boris Shershenkov.

On the square near the pavilion there is an interactive installation — “Sky Flute” rotunda by Andrej Punin and the “Arquitectura Kinetica” art group. The sounding mirrored columns of the “Sky Flute” allow visitors to feel themselves part of the sound flow of the city, dissolve in it and become co-authors of a unique sound picture.

An integral part of the project is a series of concerts of St. Petersburg musicians. This series of sound performances represents the letters of the alphabet that cannot be linked exclusively to a phonogram or an object, but require human breathing, live vibration, and almost ritual listener's participation.

The project “Thirty Three Sounds: The Alphabet of St. Petersburg Experiment” is a part of the “Museum Line” project.

Free entrance.