Present Moment Project

This collaborative project [with Landscape Architect Rebecca Krinke and Psychyatrist Henry Emmons, MD] focused on the insertion of contemplative environments within existing building spaces. These environments explored the influence of qualities that
we associate with nature and their affect on stress reduction. In my role as co-author, artist, and collaborator I generated new work that juxtaposed natural objects, interactive technologies, and dynamic sculptural spaces. I took the lead in the integration of these elements within the design of a series of environments for contemplative experience and introduced new materials and technologies to support the concepts that brought us together as collaborators.

Lights were embedded in the spread of stones surfacing the floor of this space. Their luminosity shifted with the intensity of the ambient light. The sound made by the shifting stones as people walked within the space offered a palpable orientation to the moment, the light provided the focus which facilitates contemplation.

The softwall shaping this space was also a carrier for colored light. This edge becomes a tune-able atmosphere of color that can be changed according to preference, choreographed to display a cycle of light or integrated with a soft, tactile interface that enables people to link their state of relaxation to the effects that they experience with variable colors of light.

I am very interested in the experience of space, its shaped volume, the permeability of the edges defining it, and the contrast of the curvilinear to the rectilinear. The Present Moment Project explorations were initially conceptualized as spaces that people entered into, within yet separated from the larger space. Over time these installations explored a broad spectrum of ways of shaping modes of engagement in contemplative experience. I began to focus my inquiry upon zones of experience and the layering of these zones, ultimately developing an interest in my new work which is framed as Ambient Sites. Ambient Sites does not require people to change the path of their movement, to enter a defined space. Rather it proposes to insert acute sensory experiences that attune people to the here and now, momentarily as they continue of the path that they have already chosen.