Aurora Room

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Meeting House with Ground Control Miami presents Aurora Room, a collaboration between Miami-based artist Emmett Moore and experimental architecture laboratory RAD-UM. Stemming from a mutual interest in the intersection of design and technology RAD-UM and Moore have produced an immersive and responsive installation addressing the psychological effects of the built environment. Visitors interact with sensor-controlled projections and color patterns based on a series of films developed in the 40s used to treat different forms of psychosis. Auroratone films were developed in the 1940s by filmmaker Cecil Stokes using audio waves on crystallizing chemicals and polarized light to produce soothing synesthetic visual effects. The films were used to treat traumatized soldiers, juvenile delinquents, and mental patients. 18 short films accompanied by music were combined to create a 30-minute long movie, Music in Color. Of the original 18 films, “When the Organ Played Oh Promise Me” is the only surviving film. With the help of The Academy of Arts and Motion Picture Sciences in Los Angeles and Walter Forsberg, an archivist based in New York the film was scanned and digitized for this project.