An interactive art installation fuses LED lights and spatial audio to take its audience on a sensory journey through a shifting constellation. Paul Milligan speaks to Andrew Schneider.
The origins of NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) stems from the pandemic, and also a life-long interest in technology, explains American artist Andrew Schneider. “I’ve always wanted to see if I could make a show that’s only design. What would that look like? Would an audience be interested? How is that different from seeing something in a gallery, for instance? And those two things came together at the right time.” The lockdown and subsequent restrictions on public gatherings forced Schneider to think about producing something for a smaller audience than he was used to. “If we can’t gather in large groups, maybe we can gather in small groups? We can do something for one or two people at a time. And there’s no person or story to follow outside of yourself because the story that you follow is your own story, and the thing that you look at is towards yourself.”
NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) is an interactive theatrical installation where the audience steps into total darkness and an unseen narrator guides each participant through an individualised journey into a precisely programmed matrix of nearly 4,000 reactive LED lights and accompanying 396-channel soundscape. The experience invites audiences to reflect on how we spend our time and the meaning we discover in everyday acts. It is one of four works shortlisted for the inaugural Annwn Prize, which is the first global award to celebrate excellence in immersive storytelling.
Having previously been on show in different cities across America, in Abu Dhabi, and as part of London Film Festival, NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) will be exhibited at the Wales Millennium Centre, from 27 May-26 June, with the winner announced on Sunday 14 June at an awards ceremony in Cardiff. The creative process for Schneider began in 2020, and after three years of R&D, soldering LEDs and working with wave field synthesis (a spatial audio rendering technique), NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) officially premiered in December 2022. “Since then, I’ve been making tweaks and changing the story. Every venue that it goes to is a new opportunity to make something new,” says Schneider.
Although the exact make-up of the room may change from venue to venue, the idea is the same: a pitch black room filled with LED lights fitted every two feet, from left to right, front to back, and up to down, so the audience has to walk through them. There are 11 LED lights high, 24 wide, and 15 deep. “You’re amongst them, you’re touching them and they’re touching you,” he explains.
For those unable to make it to Cardiff, NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) unfolds like this: groups of up to eight are led into the darkness and enter during a 15-minute window. “There might be folks already in there, sitting, laying, walking around. You’re free to do the same, the cycle lasts about 30 minutes, but you can stay for as long as you want,” explains Schneider. “The way your eyes work, it takes a while to adjust as you walk in. You really don’t know what you’re looking at because it seems too large or too close to be a computer generated thing. While standing there you think you’re alone, and then when it comes to a bright section of the show you realise there are people lying on the floor in front of you.
A solid matrix of light appears at certain points, and rolling clouds appear from above. When the lights are in your field of vision, you don’t see other people, but when they’re above, they light the people below, so it really changes the architecture of the room.”
This is when NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) transforms from a light show to something much more emotional, impactful, and truly immersive. After wandering around in the dark for 15 minutes or so, a voice kicks in telling you that you can hang out if you’d like, as ‘we’re going to be here for a little bit’. What begins then is a narrative journey asking the audience questions such as ‘Where were you just before now?’ or ‘How many days have you been alive?’. The voice informs the audience how much time they’ve spent doing various mundane tasks such as ‘You have spent 17 hours pushing the elevator door close button,’ or ‘Nine hours misspelling your own name on e-mail,’ etc. Each mention of a task corresponds with a little universe that springs the LED lights into life. The emotional climax is when the questions become more personal, to messages such as ‘When was the last time that you held their hand?’ or ‘When was the last time that you told them you loved them?’.
For Schneider the show is about using data on a human life but adding a deeper element. “Here’s a bunch of numbers and here’s how you might want to feel about it emotionally. It’s like a love letter to grief, but it’s all told through this narration that’s swirling around you because we use wave field synthesis. It’s a celebration of the last time that everything will ever happen in the universe and why we should embrace that and feel great about us living every moment to its fullest now.”
What was the biggest technical challenge of this project? There are two answers to that question explains Schneider. “One of the biggest challenges is getting the room as dark as it needs to be. We’re used to standard theatrical blackouts, where if you let your eyes adjust for a few seconds you can still see your hand, see the exit sign etc.” Schneider had to work with venues to make sure that’s not a possibility, “so you really can’t see your hand in front of your face.” This process usually takes three days to set up in a regular theatre, with the theatre having done additional blackout work pre-install.
The other big technical challenge was making it feel is organic as it does, he adds. “Everything’s hand-built, it’s hand-soldered. I thought it needed to be millimetre precision for each row, and that’s what I went for. But when you hang it there’s all these variables and if one got hung an inch higher than another one, that ended up being rather nice, the little variables in the gridding are actually quite nice. Then it became how do I make something that actually feels more organic? Because it can feel very cold and very Matrix-like, very Tron-like. I was constantly fighting against that the entire time.”
Why did Schneider decide to use 3D wave field synthesis for NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars)? “I don’t want it to feel like you’re in there with the ‘voice of God’. it’s so easy to come in and a big booming voice coming over the PA that knows everything and it’s going to tell you about your life. I really wanted it to feel like your inside voice, asking you to think about certain things, or like a friend talking to you and walking around with you. Wave field is perfect for that because it’s so reactive at those specific timbres and pitches of the human voice. It’s very good at recreating those in that range, and with the 3D trackers that we use, we can really put the voice on your shoulder. it never feels like you’re walking past a speaker, and it is loud and then you’re far away and it’s quiet. It really does feel like someone’s walking with you. And that was very important from the beginning.”
Like all successful projects where art meets technology, the technology has to serve the story for NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars) to really work. “How do I get you to trust me in taking you through a thought experiment about your own life in a guided meditation in a dark room with a stranger? I try to entice you with the razzle dazzle and then let’s actually think about all these things,” Schneider says with a smile.