HEARding Cats Collective is pleased to present the second iteration of Rich O'Donnell's intermedia creation, Serious Warping of Space, Time, and Your Mind, A Sci-Fi Fantasy.
This ambitious performative installation will comprise three levels of the Kerr Foundation building, connecting each level with a system of delayed media distribution. Each independent level functions as a discrete media environment, using sound, dance, video, sculpture, and light to accomplish a systematic investigation into what we perceive as time and space.
The event begins in “real-time”, with videographers capturing the initial performance of dance and movement. As the event progresses from the top level of the building down to the cavernous stone basement of this former bathhouse, time becomes non-linear and, in fact, reverses as events and movements reoccur, sometimes reconfigured and distorted to invoke a dream-like sense of cryptomnesia. Large video projections, multi-channel sound installations, and a fashion design / sound presentation all coalesce into a complex environment of media and architecture.
Fundamentally, Serious Warping of Space, Time, and Your Mind, A Sci-Fi Fantasy suggests that visitors consider time in such a way that is counter to their perception and unfamiliar to their experience. Humans are forced to engage with time passing in a very specific way, on a scale that reflects our own lifespans and histories. This event exploits artistic media capable of expressing time-related characteristics that range from video transmissions traveling through space at the speed of light to a more evolutionary time-scale that brought clothing from a primitive utilitarian necessity to the important cultural artifact that is fashion today.
As artistic director, O'Donnell has developed a system that specifies how content is to be developed. The content itself is produced by a number of artists working in a live, improvisational context. The following St. Louis-based artists have been selected to facilitate serious warping of space, time, and your mind:
Sound and music: Rich O'Donnell, Venus Slick, Dr. Mabuse, Bryan Erdmann
Live video processing: Kevin Harris, Chad Eivins, Zlatko Cosic
Dance: Ashley Tate, Thomas Proctor
Fashion design: Ameli Blaser, Marcel Coleman, Trang Nguyen