Send Light, Room II

Descent

Instrumentation: Interactive/generative 8-channel electronics – MacBook, iPhone, metallic resonator, 4 arduino sensor boxes, DMX lighting

Duration: Indefinite (installation), 8-20 minutes (performance)

Program Note:

Send Light, Room II is an interactive and generative audio-visual installation/performance piece composed using Max. I created this work as a sequel to Send Light, Room I after reading Mark Z. Danielewski’s experimental horror novel House of Leaves. The work gradually developed between Fall of 2024 and Spring of 2026, with each iteration adding more capabilities and refinements to the installation/performance.

The visitor or performer interactively explores the work by roaming around the installation space in darkness, holding the iPhone and a flash light (which they may or may not elect to use). They are able to enact various gestural commands on the iPhone, with the Max patch constantly receiving streams of OSC data – one measuring the proximity of the iphone to the centrally-placed laptop, four measuring the proximity of the performer to various arduino sensor boxes, and four measuring the amount of light each arduino sensor box receives.

These interactions cue recitations of texts that meditate on the themes of House of Leaves – grief, loss, the experience of constructed spaces, resonance, love, labyrinths, madness, ecstatic experience, and the divine. The readings are then surrounded and punctuated by the ghostly howling of a perpetual wind, the metallic humming of a disembodied minotaur at the center of the installation’s “labyrinth,” and the angry red flickering of an unknown and dangerous light from the laptop.

The interactions of the visitor/performer with the sensor boxes occasionally cue angry “thunderstorms” in the installation, rapidly sending DMX commands to the lighting system. After enough of these storms have accumulated, the installation begins its ending sequence which dramatizes the climax of Danielewski’s House of Leaves.

Send Light, Room II represents my most involved technological experiments to date – it was a wonderful challenge to incorporate Arduino microcontrollers and DMX lighting control into my work for the first time in live performance.

The work is intended to be experienced in a large, multi-level space in close to absolute darkness.

Premiere:  March 18, 2026; Athens, GA. William Emde, performer.