In April 2022 I designed and built, with the assistance of my best friend Ian, an immersive installation at Desert Shores along the Salton Sea in Southern California. This was for the 2022 SOS Earth Day festival that my friends put together through their art collective Nepo+.
Please enjoy the video above to capture an essence of the experience that I created.
The original intent for this installation was to bring my Burning Man maze to the Salton Sea, but time was limited for the assembly on site. I instead centered the concept around sound design and recorded natural sounds throughout the Desert Shores site that would later host the festival. Using Ableton Live software, I manipulated and layered these sounds in different channels, which I placed in portable speakers in side of "sound clouds" that I fabricated. Naturally these sounds had LEDs inside of them as well; I am Shane after all. This created a multisensory, moving surround sound effect as you walked through the installation.
The installation was framed inside of a monkey hut; a common shade structure used at Burning Man. When it occurred to me that this space would be the only shaded area at the festival, Ian and I decided to build "playa tech" benches to make the space a lounge and shaded refuge by day, and a psychedelic portal by night. Original poetry in the form of floating poster boards was also added to give a narrative element to the soundscape.
Above you may hear the original demo below that I created to sample the sound design for the individual sound clouds.
Below you may view photos of the installation during the night of the festival.
