LADIES & GENTLEMEN
Indio, CA USA
2011

The influential UK band, Spiritualized, teamed up with the acclaimed film director Jonathan Glazer to create a physical manifestation of the song “Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space.” This installation was housed in a cathedral-like space designed by Los Angeles-based Undisclosable. A series of material layers separate the frenetic environment of the Coachella music festival from the serene meditative headspace of the building’s interior. The outermost skin, a torqued trapezoid, is composed of an aluminum fabric, reflecting the sun’s rays, cooling the interior and serving as a beacon within Coachella’s expansive grounds. The inner skins exist primarily to further attenuate sound and light in order to provide an ostensibly blank canvas upon which sound and light are sculpted. The interior of the building is illuminated solely by five trapezoidal shafts of light, forming five 4’ x 7’ rectangles of light upon the floor of the space. Light and sound are fused, each light shaft containing and highlighting a different remixed stem of the Spiritualized track. Coupled with the warmth of the light, this invites the installation occupants to move between light shafts or even lie down within a bed of light and sound. The dark portions of the interior are filled with the remainder of the track, which is inter-meshed with white noise, particularly at the perimeter. The architecture is a platform for the choreography of the light and sound installation, which is, in turn, a platform for the actions and emotions of the festival goers who occupied the space.

CLIENT
The Creator’s Project

ARCHITECT
Undisclosable

STAFF LEAD
Matt Melnyk, SE