Manifest 1.0

Brooklyn, NY

Year: 2017

Medium: Architectural installation with live performances

Location: Founders Lab NYC

Key Collaborators:

• Music + Direction: Sunni Colón

• Creative Direction: Melisa Dougherty

• Art Direction: Yo-Yo Lin

• Audio Design: Joanna Fang

• Interactive Design: Skylar Jessen

• Architecture: Jules Molloy, sunbunker

Technical:

• 360° spatial audio system

• Interactive lighting environment

• Custom-built architecture

• Responsive visual displays

• Bespoke olfactory design

Support: The Family Collective (Production Partner)

In an age increasingly mediated through screens, where isolation grows, Manifest 1.0 is as a portal into a different kind of technological engagement. Through careful orchestration of sound, light, scent — where each sensory element responded to the other — the work asked: how might we hold spaces and implement technologies that foster rather than inhibit emotional intelligence? Visitors were asked to provide written memories of a time when they felt alone, so their answers could be coded within an emotional spectrum and designated a unique color field, which they could then experience when onboarding into the installation’s live show. This marked an early use of affective computing and machine learning in an exhibition setting, inviting participants to explore how technology might serve as a bridge to deeper states of presence.

Manifest 1.0 was seeded through a desire to expand ideas I became excited about in undergrad, exhibited by My Kaleidoscope as an early prototype. After working in the tech and music industries in New York, I reconnected with a friend from LA who had just released his first EP “Thierry Disko,” Sunni Colón. I had just left my role as Project Manager working for Cinematic Music Group and the independent Pro Era label. During my time there I helped commission live tour visuals for hip-hop musician Joey Bada$$, which came through another reconnection, with a USC classmate and creative technologist Yo-Yo Lin, who had recently begun working with a visual art collective named The Family. After creating the live show for Joey’s tour, which traveled to main stage of Coachella, I asked The Family if they would be interested in developing an experimental project with me, in collaboration with Colón. At the end of summer in 2016, the group of us traveled to Childish Gambino’s mysterious Joshua Tree event called “Pharos”. Camping together on the event grounds, we all bonded while experiencing a surreal live music show that was unprecedented at the time. From there, we began ideating and assembling a team that would eventually go on to produce “Manifest”.

Pushing past traditional performance paradigms, Manifest 1.0 created a liminal space that blurred boundaries between audience and artwork, physical and virtual, individual and collective. In a circular performance space, audience members sat directly on the floor of the installation around a central enclosure that held Colón as he played live renditions of unreleased music. The work's success was not just in its technical qualities, but in its ability to create conditions for genuine human encounters within a technologically-mediated environment. This synthesis of intimacy and innovation established themes that would become central to my practice. As the founder and executive producer of the installation, Manifest 1.0 crystallized my commitment to interdisciplinary art-making approaches that have continued to propel my work.