Paradise Lost: Transfix at the Salton Sea is a roaming site-specific atmospheric performance that merges video projections and live performance. Transfix is an interactive, silent performance that will transform the ASU campus into a poetic theatrical landscape. Using hand-held projectors, the performers will project images of Transfix at the Salton Sea—an abandoned resort town in California—once a thriving destination, now a toxic environmental disaster. The photographs are a collaboration between my company Vessel and professional photographer Chris Loomis, who took over 600 images with real film and five different cameras.
Our goal was to capture haunting images as a stark reminder of the cause and effect of the boom and bust economy. Tying into the story of A Year Without Summer when Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein, and themes of sustainability of EMERGE 2017, Paradise Lost: Transfix at the Salton Sea imagines a desolate world of perpetual summer. EMERGE 2017 will be the world premiere of the Transfix at the Salton Sea photographs that will eventually have a gallery show later in the year.