FIND ME (2018), Audio art installation (12:1 speakers, 25-min loop)
Christina Campanella and Jim Dawson

Excerpt from showings at HERE Arts Center, March 2018

We turned HERE’s subterranean theater into a darkened gallery space and built a false wall where seating risers would have been in order to have 2 opposing walls for Kathy Rugh’s projections. The 12:1 speaker system encircles the audience on 3-tiers: near the ceiling, at ear height and on the floor – allowing us to move score elements from speaker to speaker in a variety of patterns and shapes. The single sound of keys locking a door ricochets between three speakers spread out across the room. The sound of footsteps climbing a long stairwell seems to ascend through the ceiling to another plane, deployed in a spiral pattern from speaker to speaker in a steady flow over the whole system. The song seems to position the listener within the belly of the baritone guitar and throat of the vocalist; which later expands to a sense of full surround, engulfing them in the strains of a live orchestra. Audiences were free to listen from a fixed position or move throughout the space.

Credits: Stephanie Fleischmann (Lyricist) • Kathy Rugh (Projections) • Ayumu “Poe” Saegusa (Light) • Joe Diebes (Guitar) • Christina Campanella (voice, keyboards, programming)

Video Documentation and Editing by Damian Calvo

FIND ME was funded by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature via NYSCA’s Independent Artist Commission in Film, Media, and New Technologies.