chrysalis

Have you ever made a blanket or tent-fort out of whatever happens to be around your room, including: furniture, cushions, blankets and sheets? Did you find a sense of comfort and satisfaction in making improvised tents, forts, hollows, caves and just spaces? By choosing and creating 'spaces', did you feel calm and safe?

Designed as an installation-based immersive environment, viewers literally walk through a doorway into a room through a haze of fog and are confronted with a constructed installation of a tent-fort with a video loop projected inside, appearing like a warm inviting fire. Experimental techno soundtrack, atelier, pulses like a heartbeat resonating througout the entire blue-lit space, while a prominent animation unfolds on the walls.

Constructed only from available furniture, including: a coat rack, chairs, benches, a plinth and a speaker stand, guests are invited inside the tent-fort. There's just one thing. The tent-fort is purposefully constructed for the height of an eight year old child (approx. 4'), thereby requiring tall adults to bend to peer inside or to crouch to enter the space. The crudely constructed fort holds several guests comfortably to rest on pillows and watch a short, tranquil video loop, active silence, while listening to the soundtrack, before emerging from the chrysalis back to adulthood again.

chrysalis is a respite from the flurry of activity around it, a mainline back to your childhood, a self directed time out, and other world!

special thanks

Group project with Zandi Dandizette (wall projection) and Sara Gold (music).

materials

Wall partition on wheels, chrome clothing rack on wheels, wooden benches, chairs, curtains and sheers, yoga mat and pillows, mylar sheeting, projected animation, specialty flashlight, gel diva lighting kit, gel LED, ultraviolet light bar, fog machine, pico projector with video loop, speakers, subwoofer, and soundtrack.

exhibitions

2019 BYOB: Bring Your Own Beamer, VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver, BC