By Lindsay DePietro

Day 8 of my Infringement exploration brought me back to Milkie’s once again, with a side quest to The Mothership.

My night at Milkie’s started off on a high note with ComedySportz Buffalo performing what they call a comedic sporting event. It was my first time being introduced to such a sport, and I was not disappointed. And yes there were teams, there was a referee, it was highly competitive, and there were indeed laughs all around.

Two teams went head to head playing a selection of made up games, improvising answers and responses as they went. The audience got to pick the topics, words, or letters to help jump-start each game and round. One game featured a contestant speaking in complete gibberish, while his other two teammates had to improvise a funny story line and come up with conversational responses on the spot. The improvised story line: A witch creating a potion for the gibberish speaking man to find love. In a turn of events and much to the witch’s dismay, he ended up falling in love with the witches sister.

Sad to leave the entertainment of ComedySportz, I made my way to The Mothership— with some bumps along the way. Although arriving at the address, the venue was a mystery with nothing to point me in the direction of where to go. Luckily, after a few minutes of wandering, a couple of individuals emerged from an unmarked building and pointed me in the right direction, which led to me—hesitantly—entering a dark room.

I shortly came to the realization that the lights were missing for the purpose of audiovisual performances. The first Mothership performance I witnessed was by James Pardue. Purdue played noises on his soundboard while a projector displayed a trippy video that he said reactivated the audiovisual remnants of a lost TV episode.

Next up was Timothy Georger who also played with sounds over this hypnotizing video, utilizing random game mechanics to direct his improvisation. He played with different objects to create noise, such as dropping coins.

Venturing back to Milkie’s, I got to enjoy the post-rock quartet, Bone Machine, perform again. Although I witnessed them play on opening night at Nietzsche’s, their performance tonight was especially good. The vocals were much easier to hear at this venue.

As it hit just after 11 p.m., DJ J3lly, who found his name through the love of Jellyfish, took the stage to spin some beats.

To view the list of performances for Friday, Aug. 1, visit either the Infringement website for the full schedule, or the Buffalo Hive Calendar.

Some more scenes from the Buffalo Infringement Festival Instagram page: