Let me tell you a story. It's a story filled to the rim with creativity and positivity. Full of openness for the new and an embrace of change. Full of art and cutting edge technology. Full of life.
And it is only the beginning!
At our artist residency at Jump Into The Light in the months just before the lockdown, my creative co-conspirator and I got introduced to professor Phillip Baldwin by Michal Skalski, the co-owner of JITL. Both of these guys are visionaries. And the professor made it possible that creatives from different fields could visit a special place in the Hamptons in July.
Bioscleave House is also called "Lifespan Extending Villa", designed by Arakawa and Madeline Gins. It consists of four separate yet open rooms with a sunken kitchen at its center. It is designated as an "inter-active laboratory of everyday life".
Isn't this amazing?! I am super grateful to have been a part of this performance-event-meet-up-deep-exchange-interview-series-inspirational-journey. Many different things happened in this crazy cool place in a short time. One of them was The Cycle Of Life And Death.
We came in, felt the house, climbed around (the floor is crazy, barefoot is the only way!), and set up our gear. The next morning we started our musical journey with BIRTH. Nothing was pre-recorded or pre-prepared. We let the inspiration of the longevity house flow into the improvisation. I created several musical layers by recording one instrument after the other with Ableton Live in a loop. I also looped sounds of the guitar. Add vocals, and voilà. Wake up, my love.
Electric Djinn joined with a heart beat. Alive. Pulsating. We jammed together, letting the open rooms carry the sounds and the house be the sound engineer. Jenn and I could not see each other. We just listened and created. We breathed with the house and started the Cycle.
In the afternoon Electric Djinn and I returned to our instruments, and the amazing musician, composer and producer Keith Patchel joined us to transcend life. Energy, the urge to do, activity, liveliness. Exactly what was going on in the house. Phillip and the gang set up projectors, the neurosensors, the machine which breaks your heart, 360° cameras and the Matterport. Action. Conversation. Exchange All as a part of our music, of LIFE.
In the evening we dove deep into the third stage. DEATH as chaos, confusion, beauty, change, the unknown. While TJ Butzke filmed in 360° and scanned with the Matterport, we streamed live with different cameras on several channels, alone together, in the Bioscleave, bringing the house and our vibrations into the whole world. Traveling across borders and continents. Mixing realities. Transcending limits with energy and technology.
During this wave, Phillip read from his book "Turing Tests" while using the app Manifesto by billtjonesai.com. The app translates the spoken language into written words, which you can then move around with your wrist. The performance was projected onto the wall of the house, adding a visual element to the music and words. The day came to its end. The Cycle Of Life was lived through. This is the end, beautiful friend. I am not anymore.
After the performance of The Cycle Of Life, Keith cooked for all of us, and we had a wonderful meal on the porch, talking, exchanging ideas and talking about philosophy, art, architecture and future projects, listening to the wind in the trees and to the birds communicating. And a dinosaur came to visit as well.
XRE – the Extended Reality Ensemble is active now. The concept for our next performance "The New Cosmic Symphony" is nearly done, and expect nothing less than a full-blown show in several realities including actors, dancers, performers, musicians and lots of new tech! More to come soon.
