Reflected Ceiling Plan

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The task is assumed that we have been commissioned to design a suspended ceiling for a musical performance. This ceiling will act as the temporary backdrop for the musician’s short-term residency in a historic civic building. The musician insists on repurposing the components of a drop ceiling because of their appeal to the collective imagination – our familiarity with (and desensitization to) the shapes and configurations of this flat surface, collapsed against the iconography of the existing space, is what excites the performer. Typically reserved for the coordination of mechanical systems and atmospheric effects – such as lighting, ventilation, acoustics, etc. – this blank horizontal plane has the potential to do so much more if reanimated by its repressed imagistic identity. To this point, the musician seeks to integrate his/her own visual sensibility into the logics of the drop ceiling and would like us to use a selection from his/her videography to generate content. The performer suggests that digitally manipulating this imagery and mapping it to the false ceiling would help to extend and reenvision prior narratives embedded within these architectural fragments. While the historic site may call forth nostalgic sentiments about civic values, we now have the opportunity – by exploiting contemporary media consumption habits – to use this suspended surface for sponsoring new optical effects that could make an engaged public of an otherwise passive audience.