Make Area Gray Again

This was the debut of the Shrine (the first of many iterations), created for a showcase at Gray Area, culminating a Creative Code intensive (12 week course) for which I was a TA. Titled "Make Area Gray Again (Shrine)", it was created in response to the National Endowment for the Arts rescinding a $50,000 grant from Gray Area, citing a shift toward "empowering houses of worship to better serve their communities."

When I heard this, my initial reaction was that it was absurd that the White House would use an arts grant for "houses of worship". Absurd as it was, it wasn't surprising for this administration.

My second reaction was to think about how Gray Area was my church. Being in this theater with the high ceilings and resonant acoustics reminds me of a dark and tech-y version of the Catholic churches I grew up going to.

I had recently attended my cousin's wedding, which took place in such a church, and which had rows of votive candles in the entrance of the church. The ritual of these candles is to make a monetary offering/donation to the church and light one of the candles in prayer. I was inspired by the ritual and wanted to make my own candles for lighting.

My thought was that, if I were to include an offering and candle lighting ritual as part of my Gray Area project, it would turn Gray Area into a "house of worship", invalidating the reasoning of the grant rescindment.

I had been experimenting with fabricating paper LED lanterns using to-go chopsticks I had lying around. I figured out a method to make frames for the lanterns using the chopsticks and papier mâché, and then covered them in transparent paper. I found a cabinet and desk on the sidewalks of my neighborhood, and everything fit together really well. I added capacitive touch sensors to the lanterns and then wired everything up to ESP32 microcontrollers and connected them to the network (so I could get feedback from the sensors and control the LED lighting live from my computer). I orchestrated everything with TouchDesigner.

For the exhibition, I instructed participants to make an offering and then light a candle by touching the tip. I informed them that monetary offerings would be donated to Gray Area, and that non-monetary offerings may be used in a future art project. The piece raised ~$140 in monetary donations. The $50k grant was never given back to Gray Area, unfortunately.