Sound Haven Music and Arts Festival 2023

One of the most interesting parts of Sound Haven Music and Arts Festival, an experimental bass music festival held outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee in July 2023, was its remote location. The festival grounds were at the end of a long and very windy series of roads that took you well outside of Chattanooga into the mountains. Its remoteness allowed for all-night music on state-of-the-art soundsystems from artists all over the world.

The festival’s 3rd stage was hosted by a regional music label known as Kouch Kollective and featured a mono stack of custom speakers, DJ platform in the middle of the dance floor, and some of the festival’s only accessible shade from the hot July sun.

I arrived onsite without knowledge that the stage would only be active during the day, instead expecting a 4-5 hour install with some consistent work throughout the weekend to change the piece as people interacted with a variety different-colored yarns at night under changing color0-changing lights. With this new daytime-only information presented upon my arrival I had to quickly adjust to formulate a completely new concept, determine rigging needs, and fully install the piece in only 12 hours – and all with whatever materials I brought with me since the nearest supply store was nearly 45 minutes away and closed for the night. My other challenge was to choose a design that was striking during the day, without the aid of UV or colored lights.

An early decision was to use all one color – orange – to force people to see the piece as one unified form instead of a series of color changes. Orange both because it would contrast strongly against the green foliage in the small valley and because I was not entirely confident that I had enough skeins of any other color to complete the piece without being forced to restock. Using that spark I referenced an old idea from a previously rejected application (creating what I called “horns” originally), then cleared the concept with the Kouch Kollective crew and got to work.

I began by using pre-made tubing with spaced hooks from a previous installation to create right and left borders that terminated at an angled section pointing directly towards the speaker stack and hovering above the DJ platform. From there I outlined the dancefloor and brought the back of the piece down to the ground to close off the back of the “room” and also prevent people from walking into swampier dancefloor conditions deeper in the woods. The festival received an immense amount of rain the day after installation and the very back of this wooded section already had water issues, so this was good crowd control in addition to creating a very interesting sweeping angle within the seemingly-chaotic lines already present in the piece.

To create the horns, or what people later began calling “portals” required a very tight weave of yarn before it could be displaced and create a conic section. This piece was challenging, especially working through the night, but it is one of the most striking forms that I’ve created. it was a pleasure working with the Kouch Kollective crew to create something that featured their unique brand of music, drew wanderers into the area, and left a very strong and unusual impression upon everyone who saw it.

Size approximately 75′ long by 35′ wide

And of course I couldn’t resist using the UV laser on the piece, since I brought it with me anyway. Even though music was not happening at that stage at night, if someone found themselves wandering into the area they would be treated to a light show like people do not usually see. And those portals really create a wild effect with the laser.