The RASA Project
An audiovisual Performance
Role: Visual Assistant & Projection Engineer
Tools: TouchDesigner
National Sawdust presents the World Premiere of THE RASA PROJECT, a multimedia experience responding to the escalating climate crisis. Created by a team of musicians, neuroengineers, choreographers, and visual artists, this transdisciplinary performance reimagines John Cage's fascination with indeterminacy by immersing the audience in real-time, neurogenerated projections.
The program—featuring the New York premiere of inti figgis-vizueta’s INBHIR, Reena Esmail’s exhortative Varsha वर्षा, and Cage's monumental Sonatas and Interludes—invites a poignant reflection on generational climate anxiety and the decay of the planet.
THE RASA PROJECT is performed by students and alumni from Manhattan School of Music, Columbia University, Yale’s Geffen School of Drama, Peridance Center, and Tsinghua University.
Press:
https://poisonputtosound.substack.com/p/the-week-over-heard-3
Photography by Maria Baranova
Photography by Jill Steinberg
In my role as Visual Assistant and Projection Engineer, I worked closely with musicians, software engineers, neuroscientists, and visual artists to create real-time visualizations of both the instruments' music and the dancer's EEG data. Additionally, I managed the setup and resolved technical issues related to the performance's projection mappings.
I used TouchDesigner to program visual effects where a dynamic "brush" responded to sound and "dust" movements synchronized with the dancer's EEG data. Each of the six chapters of the performance was represented by distinct palettes and brush styles. Here is a preview of the projected content I assisted in creating: