I have been thinking a lot about the installation part of my project lately. Right now, it sounds really cool in theory, but I am having a hard time figuring out how to go about actualizing my idea while maintaining the integrity of what I want.

At first I thought this was going to be a video and music project, then I thought it wasn't, but I have since seen a really cool installation exhibit at the MoMA and have learned about a really cool program that are making me think about incorporating video again. The installation I saw at the MoMA was this piece by a Swiss artist. She transformed the entire atrium on the second floor into this psychedelic womb thing. I will explain further. They put down really comfy carpeting all over the atrium, and in the middle of the room there is even more comfy carpeting in a circle around a banquette of tempurpedic couch-like things. In the middle of the couch circle there is EVEN MORE comfy carpeting. On the three solid walls (the fourth wall is covered in a pink curtain to block it off from the exposed floors) there is a really trippy video playing that has images of a naked woman crawling through a field of tulips and also a pig eating rotting fruit and also the naked woman swimming and walking around in the rain and putting tulips in her nose and sometimes just pink with bubbles forming. It is way weird, but the whole thing, accompanied by a soundtrack that can best be equated to electronic groaning, creates a trance-like atmosphere. People were lying down on every variant of carpet, on the banquettes, on each other. The whole thing seemed to have become a de facto day care center, as the centermost ring, the comfiest of all the carpets, was host to a bunch of kids who were alternately enthralled by the videos and trying to destroy each other. In fact, I was one of the few people there sans kids. I'm not saying that this bears any resemblance to what I want to make, but I do like the way it created an atmosphere. I think that I am engaged in creating an environmental experience, so there are certainly things I can take from this exhibit.

The program I mentioned I learned about is called Max/MSP and it is both a software program and a programming language. It is a way of creating sound and video pieces entirely from scratch; that is to say, the program itself doesn't presuppose anything about your creative process, so it starts you off with a blank canvas and you can build virtual devices to manipulate sound and images in any way you can imagine. Unfortunately, it is still a little too complicated for me to really be creative with -- I am just now struggling to get the basics of it, but I am hoping that if I keep working with it I might be able to figure out how to make my own thing. What it allows you to do that I really like is that you can make sound and video interactive with one another, so as a sound changes, a video will respond. The installation is going to be primarily focused on religion and religious practices, so it might be really cool if the sound is the focal point, an uninterrupted thing of religious music and the sound of people praying, and the visuals change based on the sound. This is all still a little out of my scope of ability, but I am set to practice and see what I can come up with.