The Hall of Shadows

Shadow projections in parking structure, Source 4 spotlights, shadow masks, DMX choreography. Commissioned by the Snyder Company for the CRA North Hollywood, to be realized in 2005

One of the Valley's oldest recording studio, the Amigo studio, was destroyed only recently to make way for the NoHo-Commons project. Artists such as the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Joni Mitchell recorded many of their early albums inside the white brick building that used to be near the NoHo Metro Station. This project takes the disappearance of the Amigo studio as a point of departure.

Digital technology and the appearance of new media have rendered recording studios superflous. In the era of MP3s, we might nostagically reminisce upon record albums with their mesmerizing covers and designs.

This project literally turns the spotlight on some legendary album covers. Various "California Sound" record covers from the 60's and 70's, modified and turned into shadow masks, are going to be projected on the parking structure's interior walls using architectural spotlights. the shadow projections appear and disappear in slow rhythms, animating the whole garage with a visual beat. Throughout the structure, large differently colored record shapes are painted onto the walls. These records serve not only as projection surfaces for the spotlights, but also as an orientation system for the parking structures' users.


The spotlights literally shine a light on the invisible labor of the recording industry whose anonymous studios sit within a song's distance from the Monuments to the television industry. Those who know of these sound studios see them as California shrines, the music made within them defined for a generation the sounds of a drive down the US 1, a trip to the beach and a ride up the Cahuenga Pass and down into the Valley. - Ulke

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