More than a hundred viewers crowded cross-legged on the floor of the 303 Gallery’s 21st Street space last night to watch live bands improvise a soundtrack to Doug Aitken’s latest film-based installation, “Migration.” One after another, three acts, White Rainbow, Lichens and Arp, accompanied the three billboard screens displaying Aitken’s western imagery — buffalo, train yards, roadside motels — that make up the first installment of his new three-part series “Empire.”

The music cycled between atmospheric melodies, nature sounds, and crashing, turbulent noise. At one point, an owl stared out from its perch on a motel room bed, and as feathers floated down around it, a keyboardist tapped out soft, gentle notes, mimicking a xylophone. But then the dull feedback grew louder, a bass thundered out low rhythms, and a caw cut through the growing cacophony — sending listeners into the heart of an angry flock of birds within seconds.

The images, by contrast, are eerily still. A buffalo stares blankly at a window, an owl pads around a generic motel room, the animals’ disorientation as palpable as Americans’ own mysterious migrations through nostalgic landscapes that can seem both distant and familiar.

The live music was a one-time thing, but the projections and an accompanying watercolor series are on view at the 303 Gallery’s 22nd St. space through November 1.

Image courtesy 303 Gallery.