iRFR Is All Grown Up
iRFR is a real boy now!
Read moreUnder-Song for a Cipher, One
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Light of a Lit Wick, 2017.
Read moreColor & Focus
Not many pre-movie ads, but less than pleasing lighting at Landmark Sunshine.
Read more06/07/2017, 12:32
“Here, the tensions between the show that might have been and the work actually on display are compelling, the botches inevitable and poignant.” -NYTimes Come see it!
Read more06/04/2017, 20:25
Another fun photo! Come see the show if you are in NYC.
Read more06/04/2017, 20:18
Sister Sylvester’s Maps for a War Tourist opened on Friday! Only four more performances at Dixon Place.
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Not yet, but this is enough for tonight. Got an opening tomorrow!
Read moreBurning Our Seed Corn. Part 1.
In “Amazon has added Kurt Vonnegut to its 'official' fan fiction program”1, Rob Bricken argues the Kindle Words Program's inclusion of Vonnegut's work is an assault on all that is good and virtuous in the world of literature. That it “cannot end well;” that it will inevitably “…tarnish the works of one of America's greatest authors.” Sadly Bricken does not provide the mechanism by which this desecration will occur. Perhaps Amazon will rip out chapters from Slaughter House Five to replace them with fan written work; or they might publish an “undiscovered” Vonnegut manuscript; or they could even dig up Vonnegut's corpse to tar and feather it with pages of fan fiction. All are about equally likely. Which leads to the question: how does the mere existence of tributes to an author's inspirational power damage the text's that already exist? Does Gnomeo and Juliet diminish the elegance of Shakespeare's original? Or does Cruel Intentions profane Les Liaisons dangereuses? Perhaps Phantom Menace's Coruscant reduces Asimov's Trantor? Maybe the difference is that there is “no goddamn way anyone is going to write a story staring Kurt Vonnegut's characters as well as Vonnegut did.” Bricken is right, Vonnegut is a great author; however…
Read moreIncarnating the Immaterial
"Light is not the bearer of revelation—it is the revelation."[1] James Turrell’s Aten Reign, currently at the Guggenheim[2], embodies light’s power, such that even the most insensitive observer can’t help but be moved. As a lighting designer, I’ve devoted over half my life to studying light’s ability to connect and separate, to enliven and to deaden, to reveal and to conceal. Like all our senses, sight operates in potent unconscious ways: certain colors provoke specific emotions; bright and changing sources command our attention[3]; without contrast, intense hues fade over time and alter the color of differing hues[4]; we all have two blind spots corresponding to our optic nerves—our brain automatically fills them in so we experience a continuous visual field[5]. My career involves taking these physiological and psychological facts and using them to manipulate audience members. As Jennifer Tipton[6] said, “1% of the audience notices the lighting; 100% are effected by it.” The genius of Turrell’s work is the enabling a lay person to perceive this force. Even if visitors do not know how Turrell accomplishes this, they feel consciously compelled to lie there and experience the event. They are moved and held. In the insanity of New York City,…
Read moreA Little Snippet for the Day
At first there was naught, yet after an age, the sky copulated with the ocean. From the seas’ tumescence, heat, rock, life exploded forth, building, bubbling, boiling—excreting rich earth. Once found, we tended to it, each of us with our own garden, discovering and sharing our abundance. Inspired by the prompts: “my garden,” anyone who grows my food,“ and ”underwater volcanos". Via South Pacific mythology—thanks to the awesome J.Z. Smith, who not only looks like Gandalf and with his gnarled staff, but also taught me all about tuber myths. Oh, how sexual root vegetables can become!
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