Threshold
Threshold, Mel Day & Jeanne C. Finley (Palo Alto Art Center Commission and ZERO 1 Biennial Presentation), 3-channel video and 5-channel surround sound work, Produced in collaboration with Lytton Senior Center, Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, SF Threshold Choir (Installation View: Palo Alto Art Center)
Left: Invitation to Lytton Garden Senior Communities Event; RIght: Maryhelen Macpherson with Callum & Fynn’s puppet
THRESHOLD was commissioned for the Grand Opening of the newly renovated Palo Alto Art Center (October, 2012 to April, 2013) and was also presented by Zero1 Biennial 2012. THRESHOLD was also made possible by a New Alumni Works Award from the Headlands Center for the Arts.
Artists Mel Day and Jeanne C. Finley will present a three-channel media-and surround-sound installation that explores communal, contemplative, and transitional experiences through the effects of light, sound, sight, and imagination. Threshold brings together voices of members of the Threshold Choir—an a capella group trained to sing at bedside for patients in hospice and palliative care—with voices from residents at Palo Alto’s Lytton Garden’s Senior Community. Musicologists from Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics process the singer’s recorded voices to simulate the reverberant quality of a performance in Stanford’s Memorial Church. This recombinatory sound space is visualized acoustically into a three-channel film- and surround-sound installation, including a time-lapse sequence documenting the changing light in the Church sanctuary from sunrise to sunset. Through the pairing of seniors’ voices with corresponding acoustic visualizations and new musicological methods, Day and Finely’sThreshold transports the residents of Lytton Gardens and amplifies the resonant emanations of their voices to the community.
Collaborators:
San Francisco Threshold Choir
Consulting Professor Jonathan Abel and graduate students Michael Wilson and Cecilia Wu
Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University
Andy Greenwood, Sennheiser
Lytton Gardens Senior Communites, Palo Alto
Bethany Dinh, Volunteer Director & Susan Sataloff, Enrichment Director
Frank Ham, Cascade Technologies, Palo Alto
Jeffery Cross, Photographer
David Kerr (CCRMA), Photographer and Cinematographer
Lina Vezzani-Katano, Cinematographer
Palo Alto Art Center
Headlands Center for the Arts New Alumni Works Award
San Francisco Threshold Choir practice at CCRMA, Stanford University (Photo credit: David Kerr)
