Unknown Atmospheres is a grid of thousands of suspended bulbs and a surround sound system, and it runs in both of our cities. Guests tend to describe it as weather. The people who made it describe it as a song.
Seth Nehil composed it. “I spent about six months composing the piece,” he says. “Unknown Atmospheres is a series of very short sections, so I was able to treat every 45 seconds like a different song, or environment, a different world, and then allow the animation to respond to that.” In most animation, sound comes first and picture follows. They built it that way on purpose.
It’s not actually a loop. It’s just another new space, another world.
Teaching the lights to listen
Jesse Mejía of Parallel Studio built the light side with Ethan Rose. His method was to animate gestures for the unusual light array, then map those gestures to a MIDI keyboard, so he and Seth could sit together and place every flicker against every sound by hand. “We really needed to create a deep connection between the sound and the visuals.”
The hard part, Seth says, is imagination: picturing a room that does not exist yet. Jesse’s 3D renders helped. Nothing replaced being in the space. “Many nights until the wee hours in here, tweaking and finalizing the piece.”
I’m not sure this is real
That was Seth’s first reaction to the email from Hopscotch. An inquiry at that scale does not usually land in a sound artist’s inbox, and nothing like this existed in Portland. What won him over was time. A piece that lasts years instead of a weekend, with surround sound and LED hardware to match. He trained under Maryanne Amacher, who taught him to treat architecture as part of the instrument, and he was thinking about Iannis Xenakis, who synced light to sound long before it was easy. Then he wanted something a broad audience would enjoy.
Sound’s secret power is that it can be very subliminal. It’s not easily Instagrammable.
Who it is for
“Eight-year-olds, 80-year-olds, all kinds of people,” Jesse says. “People seem much more free to explore and play.” Seth’s word for it is psychedelic. Jesse’s is awe. Ours is: stand in the middle and wait for the cut.
Sound by Seth Nehil. Light by Parallel Studio, Jesse Mejía and Ethan Rose. The film above is a few minutes on the Portland floor with the sound up.
