The instrumentis the artwork.
A corridor of video feedback on the way in. One wall that mirrors the room in particles and fractals. Three screens that put nine shows in your hands. A second wall for the work itself.
What the show is about
A live show is not a video. It is a system built to respond in the moment. This exhibition takes nine of those systems apart and hands you the controls.
About three quarters of our live work is improvised, not time-coded. Someone is playing the rig while the artist plays the room.
Nine shows live on three screens, each with the machinery that produced it, running rather than played back.
Every show names the animators and designers who built it.
Two walls, three screens
Three screens you play. One wall that mirrors the room. One wall for the work.
The walk
Wood Street, second floor
A 61'-9" × 29'-5" hall. Low ceiling, a wall of windows, two end walls with height, and a floor that reflects.
| MEASURE | VALUE | WHAT IT MEANS FOR US |
|---|---|---|
| Main hall | 61'-9" × 29'-5" · ~1,817 sq ft | Two mapped end walls, three screens on the long wall, open floor between. |
| Ceiling | 9'-10", rising to 12'-7" at a central ridge | Low. The end walls are the only surfaces with real height. That is where the projection goes. |
| End walls | 29'-5" wide, beam soffits above | Both mapped edge to edge, wall and soffits as one image. The gallery has already run projection on the stage end. |
| Window wall | Continuous windows, 78" bays | Blacked out with the gallery's own panels. The three screens stand in front. |
| Entry | Elevator → 15'-7" dogleg → alcove | The feedback corridor. A strip of widescreen panels and one camera facing them, feeding back on each other, before the room opens. |
| Floor | Dark polished concrete | Reflective. Every lit surface doubles. |
| Ceiling grid | Existing white truss / pipe with track | Rig points for the scrim, the projectors and the cameras. Load rating to confirm. |
| Egress | Two stairwell exits, one in each end wall | Must stay clear. The scrim sits in front of one of them. Needs the gallery's ruling. |
The FLOW installation on the building exterior cannot be removed, only switched off. The blackout panels go up and it stays off.
What it looks like
Built from the gallery's own photographs, so the architecture is the real room.
Look development, not construction drawings.
Two walls, three screens
The end walls carry the projection. The long wall carries the screens. The floor stays open. Click any zone.
Two walls, three screens
The end walls carry the projection. The long wall carries the screens. The floor stays open.
Approximate scale from the Wood Street plan. Positions are a proposal.
What one screen is
Four parts, repeated three times.
Portrait display
75" to 85" on a floor stand. About 6'-2" tall overall.
Podium
Waist height, 2'-0" in front, from the gallery. A MIDI controller on top: faders, knobs, pads.
The library
Nine shows. Each one with its process layer and the live patch that ran it.
Credit panel
The animators and designers who built it, named.
Every screen has a controller. Pick a show and the system that ran it is under your hands. Nothing here is a loop.
Drawn to spec
Sections at true scale. Figure is 5'-9". Dimensions are off the Wood Street plan.
Each end wall plus its beam soffits needs projection from the ceiling grid, likely two short-throw units per wall. Worth confirming against the gallery's inventory before anything is bought.
Spacing
Three screens on a 61'-9" wall sit about 15'-0" apart with roughly 8'-0" of clear wall at each end. The scrim hangs 4'-0" off the mirror wall and runs its full 29'-5" width. Both leave the floor open.
Nine shows, three screens
The library on the screens. Draft picks for discussion, not a locked list.
Flying Lotus
The longest-running collaboration and the through-line of the studio. The deepest process layer in the library.
Tokimonsta
Featured artist for the program, with the possibility of her taking part in the panel.
The Weeknd
The largest-scale production in the set, and the 3D LED case study.
BLACKPINK
Coachella. The largest audience of anything in the room, and a very different design brief to the rest.
Bonobo
Drumsheds, Royal Albert Hall, DGTL. Content built for a non-rectangular screen, which makes it the mapping case study.
Erykah Badu
The Unfollow Me Tour. The last tour show we built for her: upstage plus SL and SR screens on one pixel map.
Children of the Void
The studio's own authored work rather than client work. Worldbuilding and the AI pipeline.
Where it starts
Early studio and personal work. Video feedback, practical effects, strange loops. The corridor is built from this.
Realtime now
The current Notch and Unreal systems. The same class of engine that runs the mirror wall.
Three of these need assets sourced. Bonobo, BLACKPINK and the Badu tour masters are not in the working archive.
Collaborators, as already published
The names on our own site today. Not the full list, and the wall credits go deeper. Every addition gets confirmed before it is printed.
| WORK | PERIOD | COLLABORATORS |
|---|---|---|
| Flying Lotus | 2010–present | Steve Ellison · 3D Live | Axo. Content: Scott Pagano, Beeple, Unc, David Firth and others |
| Erykah Badu | 2012–2023 | Vince Fraser · Gavin Gamboa · Nic Juister · Steve Teeps · Vince McKelvie · Laskfar Vortok · Marcus Jessup · Lit Creative |
| The Weeknd | 2018 | Es Devlin · Leroy Bennett |
| BLACKPINK | 2023 | Cory Fitzgerald · Marvin Brown · Kiel Tutin |
| Bonobo | 2017–2019 | Autry Fulbright · Looop · Laskfar Vortok · Nick Maresh · Amanda Hamilton |
| Tokimonsta | 2015–present | Alec Maassen · 2+2 Mgmt |
| Children of the Void | In production | Strangeloop Studios original. Collaborator credits TBC. |
| Kendrick Lamar | 2013–2018 | The Little Homies · Cory Fitzgerald · Ian Simon |
The mirror wall
One new piece, built for this room
The three screens are the ones you play. This one has no controls.
A live Notch system with no controls. Cameras on the grid read the floor. Whoever stands in front of the wall appears on it, life size, drawn in particles and fractal strands, and the fractal behind them moves with the room. A raymarched 3D fractal morphing between a Menger fold and a Mandelbulb, fractal noise eroding the solid, and thousands of particles riding the curl of that field.
Cameras. Nothing to touch. Presence, position and motion drive the figures and the field. No interface, no queue.
A gauze layer 4'-0" in front of the wall, wall to wall and full height. The image lands on the scrim and again on the wall and beams behind it. The figures float in front of the fractal.
Nothing to break over six weeks. Scales from one visitor to forty. No audio conflict with the show upstairs.
Open: camera count and placement, depth or plain RGB tracking, how the piece behaves in an empty room at 10am, and the gallery's ruling on a scrim in front of the stairwell door.
Two ways through the library
Every show in the library is tagged twice, by pipeline stage and by system. Browse it by artist or by technique.
By pipeline stage
Idea / Theory
Concept and the conversation with the artist.
Reference & Worldbuild
Moodboard and look target. The world being built.
Asset Generation
3D, simulation, AI.
Comp & Look-dev
Where the look gets set.
Realtime / Mapping
Notch, Resolume, Unreal. Mapping to the venue.
Live Performance
The show. Mostly improvised.
A show reappears at several stages.
By system
Unreal
Realtime environments and the large-format LED work.
Notch
The live instrument. What an operator actually plays.
Practical
Camera, feedback, physical effects. Where the studio started.
Particles
Simulation as the source of motion rather than keyframes.
Fractals
Recursion and self-similarity. The studio's name is not decorative.
Noise
The substrate under nearly everything on these walls.
Panel, workshop, book
Panel
Ian and David, moderated by Nica from CMU STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, with possible Tokimonsta participation.
Panel first, workshop second. RAF raised it and we agree.
Workshop · Tech25, Sat Dec 12
Tech25 is a strong fit. The teaching lab already runs Resolume, Adobe and Ableton on RTX machines.
| RESOURCE | WHAT THEY HAVE |
|---|---|
| Teaching lab | 8 stations · Lenovo Legion T5, RTX 3060, 16GB, Win 11 · Resolume, Adobe CC, Ableton Live 12 Intro · MPK Mini, Volt 2, headphones |
| Instructor station | Mac Mini M2, 70" display, monitors |
| Training theater | 67' × 70', 13' ceiling · 150" screen, Sony VPL-CWZ10 · RCF PA, Onyx lighting, hazer · 24' × 12' stage |
| Also available | 5 Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 (RTX), 8 MacBook Air M3, 12 older MacBook Air, 34 iPads |
Eight lab stations caps hands-on at eight to sixteen people. Above that it is a demo.
A demo on the big rig with no cap, then a capped hands-on session in the lab. Built on Resolume, since people can carry on with it afterwards, with custom plugins on top.
Licenses to chase for the workshop: Notch, Resolume, Maxon, Adobe, Derivative.
Book
Format still open. The exhibition generates the material either way. Capture to book standard during production and decide later.
What we need from the gallery
The gallery has offered to purchase what is needed. To spec it we need these.
Six weeks unattended is a design constraint, not an afterthought. Every screen and both walls have to boot themselves, run all day and shut down without a technician in the building.
Open decisions
OURS
- The far wall: a second new piece, or a program of the shows
- Three screens or four
- The nine shows confirmed
- The controller mapping for each show
- Corridor: three panels or four
- Animator and credit list, confirmed name by name
- Budget position: what we absorb, what is funded
THEIRS
- Opening night: Nov 20 with the Gallery Crawl, or Nov 27
- Tokimonsta, hard yes or no
- Inventory and install window, via Josh
- Egress ruling on the scrim
- Workshop cap and RA ticketing
- Travel and accommodation dates
- Image assets for flyers, poster and social
Timeline
Budget is not costed here. It needs the gallery's gear answers first.