Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival

2022

Cristopher Cichocki’s five-story-tall Circular Dimensions x Microscape, was constructed with more than 25,000 feet of PVC tubes, presents a visual spectacle peering into the artist’s ongoing exploration of water and the history of the desert. When the sun goes down, the magnitude of the pavilion amps up with the artist’s ever-evolving audiovisual performance Circular Dimensions presented in 57.1 channels of L-ISA immersive hyperreal sound by L-Acoustics. Inside the bandshell-shaped pavilion contains a laboratory where scientists and artists generate experimental “video paintings” by manipulating water, salt, barnacles, and algae from the Salton Sea under microscopes and projecting the activity in real time inside the pavilion’s “nucleus.” Meanwhile, a soundscape of field recordings and industrial rhythms resonates through the structure’s circular tunnels, elevating in intensity from day to night. Microscape gives mammoth new context to his familiar materials, including reclaimed irrigation tubing and a “mutant” cast resin aloe vera — “a surviving seed” from the desert’s ancient sea.