HEARding Cats Collective is pleased to announce Pavilions: Nested Worlds, a multimedia art installation, featuring an augmented reality environment by Van McElwee and music by Rich O’Donnell.
Installed in the gallery of the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, Pavilions: Nested Worlds will allow visitors to utilize their smartphone to explore six virtual geometric structures - or pavilions. Mobile phones become instruments for peering into these structures and act as windows into this augmented reality.
Each of the six pavilions represent an alternate world, a separate fork in a more expansive multiverse. By spatially deploying multi-channel sound, O’Donnell acts as a bridge between our reality and the augmented reality, providing continuity between the alternate worlds and suggesting that he is, in fact, performing within these structures.
Three-dimensional renderings for each of the pastel-hued pavilions were created by artist and animator Casper McElwee. The playfully fictitious nature of these structures provides the source for O’Donnell’s sound environment, matching each color used with its own section of tonal characteristics.
Fundamentally, Van McElwee has developed a system whose content and form reflect the labyrinthine condition of digital culture. How do we live in a reality that is constantly branching, constantly being invaded by other realities? How does our existence change when actual and virtual occupy the same space? Is reality itself an artwork? Pavilions: Nested Worlds will deepen these questions.
Van McElwee’s body of media art includes over eighty single channel video works, installations and web projects. Grants and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship (2010), The American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Award (1983), The National Endowment for the Arts Independent Production Fund (seven time recipient), and a grant from the Government of India. McElwee’s work has been exhibited extensively worldwide and is represented by The Kitchen in New York, Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, Heure Exquise! in France, LUX in the UK, the Inter Media Art Institute in Germany.
Rich O’Donnell - The multifaceted practice of Rich O’Donnell spans 60 years as virtuoso percussionist, improviser, composer, designer and builder of percussion and electronic instruments, teacher and writer. He is director of the Electronic Music Studio at Washington University in St. Louis, and co-founder of HEARDing Cats Collective. He was 43 years with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, most of them as principal percussionist.
The event takes place on April 6th, 7:00 PM @ The St. Louis Artists’ Guild, 12 Jackson Ave, Clayton, MO 63105.
($15 General Admission / $10 Students and Artists)
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WE’RE BAAAAACK!!!
Much like the poltergeist from the feature film Poltergeist 2, in person events are back! Because scheduling is scary enough, Silver Space is here to help. Behold, our virtual baby - The Events Calendar - revived by popular demand. Here you can find out when the next gallery opening is, where you can hear free artist talks, and even what you missed out on because you didn’t check the calendar like you should have in the first place. Shame!
If you have an exhibition, event, artist talk, opening, or something tangentially associated, email marinam@silverspacestl.com and we’ll do our best to get you on!
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