Preview: Temples of the Mind at LACMA from Emily Lacy on Vimeo. Direction: Emily Lacy, camera: Jimmy Fusil and sound: Devin McNulty.
(If you cannot see above video, please visit Emily Lacy’s Vimeo page.)
Folk and electronic sound artist Emily Lacy (Film/Video MFA 06) began a two-month sound artist residency program at LACMA’s Pavilion for Japanese Art yesterday. She performs on Saturday (Dec. 5) from 6-7 pm at LACMA West as part of the launch party for the Machine Project Field Guide to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Lacy’s Temples of the Mind exhibit is about creating meditative and improvised sounds and films through acoustic and electric sounds, vocals and delay pedals and amplifiers. She talked a little about her process recently with Amy Heibel for LACMA’s Unframed blog:
EMILY: It’s very exciting to be able to build a relationship to the space over a series of weeks, spontaneously creating soundscapes and feeling how it works in the space. I use delay pedals, where you’re able to input a signal—whether it’s a voice or an instrument—and it starts to play back and then you can just create layers and layers and layers. By working with a whole series of pedals I can multiply this process of output and degradation of the sound.
This project came out of a residency I did at Machine Project where I played in their gallery window almost every day for six weeks. I had no idea what was going to come of that but I realized that this was a process I wanted to do again and again.
In addition to performing in the Japanese Pavilion, a second part of Lacy’s residency is a more intimate sound project in the Hermit’s Cabin, a mobile structure on the museum’s plaza. For audiences of one or two at a time, she’ll conduct performances in the Cabin.
Emily Lacy
Temples of the Mind
Japanese Pavilion at LACMA
Thursday through Sunday, Dec. 3–Jan. 31 from 3–8 pm
Free, no reservations