//final project proposal//

All of the projects I'm working on right now, be they performance, composition, or dance, have to do in one way or another with internal immensity (the vastness of emotional experience, the wilds of mental illness, the mystery of dreams, the worlds hidden away within our skulls, the possibilities opened up by loss and grief and death). 

I've had a vision for a music performance installation for about six months: my original idea was to build a huge cube out of PVC pipe and drape all the sides with gauzy gray fabric, and put four musicians inside, playing a minimalist electroacoustic piece. The gauze-covered cube idea is meant to represent the veil between the living and the dead - the audience can see the shapes of the musicians through the fabric, but they aren't invited inside, can't participate in it - it's important for them to interact with the cube (the dead), but they have no way of gaining access to the inside of the cube (the otherworld, land of the dead, whatever you want to call it) while still alive. I was originally thinking of having this cube in Harper Hall as part of my senior recital, but that's a challenging space to work with since it's in such high demand, so I'm thinking of the SOL House basement instead now. Since the basement has so much exposed piping, it should be really easy to suspend pieces of fabric or strips of paper from the ceiling and turn the whole basement into the veil between life and death. 

I like the idea of hanging white bedsheets from the ceiling and projecting footage onto them. One possibility is to gather footage from a dance project I'm working on and blend it into this project. 

 

I love how foggy this image feels with the density of fabric/paper.

I particularly enjoy this projection on sheet installation because it feels like looking at a series of doors that never end. 

One of the big upsides to using the basement is that I can have a lot of control over the lighting and sound environment. I can also have a lot of fun with the exposed piping in the ceiling and the crumbling brick walls. One of the downsides to this space is that there's so much junk everywhere and probably not all of it can be moved. 

I know some kind of devised sound will factor into my project as well. Some sounds I've been enjoying, perhaps in relation to this project:

• Spirit Exit - Caterina Barbieri
• Frontier - Holly Herndon
• Microplastics in My Bloodstream - OTTO
• Einstein on the Beach - Philip Glass (particularly the Knee Plays)
• Score to Man With a Movie Camera - Michael Nyman

The vibes I want to create are: eerie, familiar, unsettling, cozy, melancholy, safe. I'm very curious about creating a space in the gray area between completely unthreatening and horribly anxiety inducing, with elements of both.