Three sculptures built from bent PVC pipe wrapped in yarn, made to read as neurons – each took hundreds of hours to build. For TEDxSalem 2019, whose theme was “Re,” I was invited back as artist in residence – a strange full circle, since I’d co-created the TEDx Artist in Residence program itself in 2014. This was the first time I went through it as the artist rather than the person who built it.
I wanted the sculptures to “fire” at different levels, using color and sound. My collaborators wired them with programmable LED strips and sound, and tied the firing patterns to Solfeggio frequencies – an idea we tested but didn’t explain onstage. Afterward, some attendees told me they could feel the shift when the frequency changed. That’s anecdotal, but I think about it often.
A fourth sculpture, freestanding, only came onstage during my talk. It lit up and had a set of buttons I could trigger by hand. I used it to cue a car-crash sound effect mid-talk, and change lighting patterns as needed. It was the first time I’d built a piece I could operate live like that.
My original concept for the sculptures grew out of the word “respect” – from Latin meaning “to look back.” The talk that followed, “Reframing the Journey,” moved somewhere more personal: five years of my life, told through what creativity made possible along the way.
The stage dimensions changed late in the process to accommodate another act, so the sculptures ended up further back than they were designed to be experienced. Most of the event photos catch them from a distance, lit mostly blue, one color out of a range the LEDs were designed to cycle through. Someone found the talk years later and wrote to tell me the ideas stuck with them even though the pieces themselves struck them as strange. I’d take that trade again.
Exhibited: TEDxSalem (2019), Portland Winter Lights Festival (2019), Pickathon (2023)