What was 'The Substation'?

It all started out with a very slick and cryptic flyer, which remains my favourite present bookmark. Then I stumbled across info about it online. But I still didn't really have any idea what to expect.
Mercury Theatre III: the Substation was written up as "a site specific spectacle of sound and video art," whatever that meant, so I decided to check it out for myself.

MT3 was a project with no shortage of art-speaky rhetoric: something about the development of technology in underground Vancouver, something beyond sci-fi or something like that. But what it basically boiled down to was a bunch of people in the park sitting around drinking, smoking weed, and possibly listening to the music and looking at the visuals.

The music was live improv by several persons, which I guess redeems things a bit, but it basically sounded like all that other sparse electronicky downtempo-ey trancey stuff. A bit dull. And then there were some visuals, which I tried, I really tried, to look at, but man it just didn't pull me in. Some abstract shapes, a guy doing some martial art thing, more abstract shapes, all in highly repetitive loops, that really required hallucinogens to appreciate.

On the upside, it was still somehow, a very cool event. People gathering in Cathedral Park late at night, shooting the breeze, chilling out. Lots of people just out and about and enjoying themselves; not so much wrapped up in the art, but quite attentive to the poignant conversation with some member of the opposite (or same) sex. It definitely felt like a Vancouver who's totally willing to overlook the mediocrity of the art because at least it's a good way to feel like part of an underground community, and we don't really need a better excuse than that just to hang out and enjoy the last nights of summer.