First, came the slope. Without the hill on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm, the legendary Woodstock might never have existed. Over the course of the festival, this topography proved the perfect immersive environment to complete the stage, creating a natural amplifier, an inclined place to lay one’s head, and sightlines for 450,000 people.
This installation takes the slope as its starting point. Using prefabricated roof trusses, four modular staging structures will be deployed across the site. The strategic use of the modular trusses reduces on site construction time and capitalizes on the potential for shorter lumber lengths to be used for the chords. These chords will be adaptably constructed over the summer from diverted waste streams of salvaged wood collected from demolition sites in upstate New York. Structural testing by collaborator, Reese Greenlee, will contribute to existing and new research around the capacity of salvage materials.
When oriented with the hypotenuse up, users contacting the pieces will encounter panels with embedded sonic surface transducers that turn each physical interaction into a personal concert experience. Lighting panels transform the other faces into programmable and sound-responsive stage backdrops for sharing performances and activations with others.
With more than 12 possible configurations, the installation not only creates unique opportunities for the present, but also anticipates creative reuse in the future. Outside of Buildfest, the pieces can be organized into a ‘resting state’ configuration in which sound and light functions are left active, preserving an experience for visitors even after the show’s end. Designed to rotate, span, deconstruct and rearrange, the trusses can be choreographed as pieces of yet unimagined futures within the following years’s installation.
