Sounding Place is a live performance that combines recorded audio and visual elements and merges them with the existing architecture of the Walters Art Museum and its vast collection. By engaging visitors in unexpected places, Sounding Place brings attention to the hidden characteristics of the museum and reintroduces these findings back into the existing site. Collis and Donadio engaged with the Walters as an emergent performative space, seeing the museum as a living, breathing entity that harbors sonic and visual complexities beyond the works formally on display. 

On view: The Walters Art Museum, June 27, 2019

By challenging perceptions of the built environment, Singular Space captures the essence and physicality of municipal art, viewed through an abstract lens and connected to the urban landscape. Collis and Donadio created a multi-faceted portrait of Forum Fountain, a Brutalist-inspired public sculpture located behind Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in East Baltimore.

Completed over the course of a year, their documentation of Forum Fountain utilized digital video, drone cinematography, photography, and audio recording to produce a dimensional and meditative impression of the site and its surroundings. The culminating installation expands the life of Forum Fountain and features immersive video projection and a permeating soundscape, reflecting the undulating nature of urban life.

Architecture can be an extension of the physical self: Buildings tell us about our bodies, both personal and social, and structure our experiences and behaviors. Singular Space serves as a multi-sensory palimpsest, reminding us that public space is mutable and cannot be erased- even in the face of continual destruction or neglect.

"As the pristine geometric edges of the projected video refract and roll at a soothing pace, blending between moving and still images, sharp angles, marble slabs, and gritty textures dance across the walls. A slow thrum pulses against your eardrums, enveloping you in a soothing bath of sound." - Cara Ober, Bmore Art Magazine, January 21, 2019

On view:

ICA Baltimore, January 5-26, 2019

Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, September 21-December 22, 2019

Dismantled in late 2016, McKeldin Fountain was part of Baltimore's urban landscape for over three decades. An unembellished Brutalist structure, it was poetically designed to evoke natural rock formations of the Susquehanna River, fusing natural ecology and modern design into the heart of downtown. A designated free-speech zone, McKeldin was home to Occupy Baltimore in 2011 and Black Lives Matter protests in 2015.

As a collaborative audio-visual project, Collis and Donadio documented the fountain's last days to conjure a meditation on the essence of this urban landmark. Using projection-mapping software, video shot on-site traverses large sculptural forms that reference shapes of the fountain itself, culminating in a sensory memorial experience. Concrete / Complex is an artists’ tribute to McKeldin Fountain, to its design, history, and life in Baltimore.
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