Arcosanti.

Arcosanti, an experimental architectural community/construction site. Cordes Junction, AZ: www.arcosanti.org. Went there to help put on a performance Oct. 3 with the incomparable Human Nature Dance Theater company. Went really well, three new people in the group who seamlessly incorporated. I mostly did the set, making some wings out of thin strips of hardwood and muslin fabric. If they look slighly bat-like, it's because bats are the only large species (i.e. not insect) that has membrane wings. I found that out of necessity of designing with cloth I would have to cut the points between the frames in a caternary curve: which nature already figured out with the bat.

Photos of the set and performance can be seen at:

http://www.illuminatedvisions.com/Dance/Human-Nature-Flight/

"In visual reading, like verbal reading, the completeness of the reading relates directly to the quality of the reader's stored information. An FM broadcasting station produces an absolutely uniform transmission of information. If the broadcast is picked up in one case by a pocket transistor and in another by a high-fidelity system, there is obviously a tremendous difference in the quality of the message as received."

-George Nelson, "How to See"

I am thinking lately about the resposibility of the audience, how viewers/audiences/specators, etc. are always co-creating a piece by completing the intention of the work and interpreting it through the filter of their own lives. Thus, no matter what, a work is always a dynamic entity and subject to mis-interpretation or re-interpretation often out of the hands of the creator. We do our best to send a clear signal, and the audience hopefully does their best to tune in carefully and then consider what is being broadcast. But it is always participatory. Perhaps even more so with modern art than in the past.