Within the larger context of a late night event that takes place throughout the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, The Music Center decided to open up the backstage to the public for the first time.  I was asked to create an installation that would transform the dressing rooms in the basement that small groups could be guided through one at a time.  What an incredible space to work with!  Although the layout of the dressing rooms may seem straightforward, because of the constant disorientating nature of endless parallel mirrors, when you surface you really have no idea which way is which.

When cutting out the silhouettes for the mirrors in Dressing Room #1, I made the connection between the brush of the makeup artist and that of the artist.  As performers, we were to become the attendants to the spirits of the dressing rooms.  I loved the idea of permeating a space with a caring live presence that is usually relegated to a "proper stage".  Many of the vocalists who had been classically trained and shifted to a more experimental practice, saw this as a unique opportunity to perform beneath the home of the LA Opera.

While meandering through this spatial tapestry, one would encounter intensely beautiful and provocative  micro-worlds around every bend that were constantly evolving yet somehow remained consistent and connected in spirit and focus.

As part of the 2015  Media Mix Festival in Monterrey, Mexico in October, we were in residence for the week to mount a site-specific installation/performance within this former steel mill complex.  We were working with ideas  about the truncation and displacement of the human body in a mechanistic environment.  The installation spanned two floors.

This was an informal presentation of a work-in-progress for the Media Mix Festival in Monterrey, Mexico in October.  We are working with ideas  about the truncation and displacement of the human body in a mechanistic environment, the fleshy, skin-like quality of the wax paper in a projection environment.  Amplifying the linkage between sound and image, we are experimenting with the use of sync sound video loops that Scott can control and audio-reactive video that Carmina can trigger.

"The Decision Party" refers to a title of a poem by Adam Rosenkranz. Plus, it addresses a common misconception that improvisation = "arbitrary" or "anything goes" when it's actually a demanding series of considered decisions in the moment, and the next, and the next...I also like the idea of someone coming to the space with a decision to make, getting caught up in the experience, and perhaps leaving with some new insight.

The performers had overlapping shifts of 1-3 hrs with the guideline that once the threshold of the space was crossed, they were part of the piece.  The audience was invited to come and go as they pleased.  I was invigorated by how the installation took on many lives and how much generative exchange occurred through the attentiveness to what was transpiring from moment to moment.

THREADING  was inspired by instances of the interpretation of imaging processes were utilized to decipher form. The first is rooted in the recent discovery of a lost civilization in particularly inaccessible regions of the rainforests of Central America. The targeted areas were initially identified based on subtle indications of possible man-made forms within satellite images. Through the subsequent use of light detection technology (LiDAR) 125,000 laser pulses a second were shot from a plane down to the rainforest canopy...99 percent of which gets reflected off the leaves. But there are tiny gaps in the canopy where that one percent can reach the ground, bounce off and go back up to the plane. With massive software processing, they're able to remove all the reflections from leaves, leaving only the imaging of the landscape at ground level. These laser mappings revealed thousands of acres of newly discovered pyramids, structures, buildings, plazas, terracing and roads. They are scheduled to drop in to explore these sites in early 2014.

'Threading' is also a scientific term referring to protein structure prediction based on its amino acid sequence. Protein threading predicts the three-dimensional structure of a protein sequence by threading it through known structures and calculating its energy. This process is particularly useful in medicine, biotechnology and theoretical chemistry, diagrams of which greatly informed the layer of scrim designed and sewn by Kaoru Mansour.

In these references, Carole Kim is interested in the layers of imaging processes, deciphering data, and emergent structures. What at first appears to be a flat screen when projected upon from the front, gradually reveals great depth and complexity as the rear projection becomes activated. The act of live drawing reveals hidden layers of drawing on the hand-sewn scrims which become illuminated by the projected light while casting shadows and moving image onto the frontmost layer. In the middle section the sound acts as the engine behind the video as new forms attempt to take shape. And lastly, both the gestural and the topographical merge in an abstracted language where emergent structures struggle to persist while subjected to an at once erosive and generative process.

Part I: Labor of the Hands (rubbings of carved blocks by Brenda Bynum)

Part II: Canopy

Part III: Laser Shower

Part IV: Hidden Folds + Structures