Installation view of Light Music (1975) by Lis Rhodes

Join us in the gallery’s courtyard for a special presentation of two works, created 50 years apart, that explore the limits of perception and the relationship between sound and image.

British artist Lis Rhode’s Light Music (1975, 25 min) is an “expanded cinema” work for two 16mm film projectors, sound, and fog machine. With two projectors across from each other, rapidly oscillating abstract black and white images are projected through the fog, creating a sculptural space for the viewer to interact with. Electronic tones are produced as each black and white image passes by the film projector’s sound reader. The sound is the image and the image is the sound.  

Portland-based artist Brent Coughenour will present a live performance of The Sick Sense 2025: The Year We Make Kontakte (or, My Friend Flicker), part of an ongoing project “exploring the limits of the perceptual system”. The Sick Sense revolves around a system of audio patches sent to a visual synthesizer that responds to the audio data which “stimulate otoacoustic and flicker phenomena and auditory and visual hallucinations”, putting the viewer “into the role of ecstatic perceiver”.   

Note for photosensitive viewers: this event will have flickering images.

This project is funded in part by a Neighborhood Matching Fund Award from Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.