Lightspace Modulator: Works-in-Progress 2024 — The Brewery, Los Angeles, March 23-24 2024

Notes for open studio attendees

Welcome to the Lightspace Modulator laboratory! Please note that this is an active workshop, with industrial equipment and various hazards. The space has been darkened for video projection; please be careful. For your safety and the safety of the work and equipment, please do not touch anything unless directed. Thanks!

There are five major items on display for this open studio weekend. All can be considered works-in-progress and/or active experiments. Interactive media (video and audio) is a theme throughout, and each piece is powered in some way by VSx, a custom “visual synthesizer” instrument.

Once you enter, you will encounter the following, in sequence, as you move clockwise around the space;

Synapscape: Dirty Deal

This is a recent music video for the German industrial noise band Synapscape (Ant Zen records). Headphones are hanging on the forklift if you want to hear the track. More background on the making of this piece is here.

Analog Days Revisited

While we certainly enjoy making use of modern engines, GPUs and tools, these days, it’s also important to remember where we came from and what we had to work with “back in the day.” And there’s something charismatic and nostalgic about old NTSC video and CRTs, no? So we’re firing up some components of the old analog rig — with the addition of a stripped-down version of VSx running on a modified Atari VCS — and pushing some old-school style media through it.

Transparent Architecture

Created as an element for the Giedion/Kircher online presence, this piece involves a nod to the theory (as suggested by Giedion) that in the early 20th century modern architecture was influenced by Cubist art and the idea of multiple simultaneous perspectives (as enabled by transparent surfaces).

Intermedia Performance Art — RFxLSM

The word “intermedia” can mean many things; here we are using it (instead of “multimedia” “video art” or other such terms) to emphasize the importance of the connection between media (sound and image): what happens in the “inter” space. In this paradigm they don’t merely happen simultaneously, but they drive and modulate each other in real time in a performance art context.

This is an opportunity to present the collaboration with European artist Rick Feds (who flew to LA for the event). More at the project microsite.

M. Ordinaire and the Istanbul Diversion: An Experiment in Transmedia Storytelling

This interactive installation involves multiple analog and digital media and is built around the story behind the first single from the rock opera The Continual Return of Dr. Ordinaire. The single, Victorian Passage, is somewhat abstract and ambiguous (though “Victorian” suggests a time period, and the lyrics refer explicitly to travel). In this multiple-media “remix” we explore the chapter in more detail, where the travel is from Paris to the east, by rail.

This is one place where you are encouraged to touch and interact with the art. By moving the physical viewer left and right you can explore the physical artifacts and evidence more closely; you will notice the video projection changes as well. Furthermore, as you move across the physical/temporal timeline, the music also changes and modulates accordingly — so the “remix” is created by you.

The result can be considered a sort of game or puzzle: can you piece together the clues and determine what happened to Dr. Ordinaire after he boarded a train leaving Paris in 1931?

This installation combines multiple media, and the work of multiple Brewery artists: The large “map” painting is by Theodore Svenningsen (who also collaborated on narrative elements of this “chapter”), photography of the various characters in the opera is by Vern Evans; digital/interactive and analog assemblage elements by Pete (Lightspace Modulator).