Chromasonic – Fluid State is located in Deep Creek Mine, Telluride, CO. The 60-foot-long installation is sited in the mine’s longest shaft, a pitch-black space the length of a football field. In the heart of the mountain, Chromasonic – Fluid State is the site’s only source of light.
The installation is composed of four connected spaces created by a series of translucent scrims. Light waves generated from sound waves illuminate each of the four rooms using “Chromasonic-Refrequencing,” a real-time algorithmic process that creates fundamental relationships between light and sound first developed by Johannes Girardoni between 2004 and 2008. As sound fills each of the four spaces, light illuminates the installation in correlating hues. The dynamic between light, sound, scrim, and mine, creates an experiential state that is fluid at all times. Fields of view continuously open and close. Space appears to physically expand and contract, depending on a participant’s position and the flow of sound-generated light. This renders the site and its participants – both awash in light and sound – in a continuous flow of perceptual activation and adjustment. At the heart of the mine, this installation brings light into darkness. As a sensory catalyst, Chromasonic – Fluid State is an opportunity to ponder presence individually and in community with other participants. It is an occasion to experience how our environment constantly shifts and shapes what we see and what we don’t see. Chromasonic – Fluid State, in its physically and perceptually immersive layering, can be a meditation on what reality we are able to perceive at any given time.
In 2020, Johannes & Harriet Girardoni co-founded Chromasonic, an experimental initiative grounded in the Studio’s foundational framework of algorithmically linking light and sound, to explore its relation to health and cognition. This work continues independently within the Studio’s evolving practice, generating new spatial works and extending into broader investigations of perception, neuroaesthetics, and human experience.
