Minicorn Uniplaza

Minicorn Uniplaza is a tabletop interactive sculpture. It is meant to offer the viewer/user complete control over the lighting, sound and set order for a private show by my performance group, Total Unicorn. Looking over the crowd, straight at the three band members, projection-mapped into the sculpture, one is immersed in a live simulation, with an idealized audience, venue and specifications usually reserved for a higher profile group with a limitless budget. For small, local performance groups with ambitious production, reality sets in quickly. Your art is often limited by the imaginations and enthusiasm level of the venue staff, install time, and a variety of other considerations. Minicorn Uniplaza is a fantasy come true, in miniature. And, inviting others to experience our show in this way communicates my vision of our artistic output with more fidelity, like an architectural pre-visualization. It’s beyond reality, and, to be brutally honest, it’s more than Austin deserves at this moment in its history. The venue landscape is shrinking, making acceptable performance circumstances harder to find and far more competitive. The remaining venues are often controlled by booking conglomerates, subject to ridiculous noise restrictions, desperate to sell enough alcohol to cover rent and fend off eviction. Live music and theater are not as much a part of Austin’s DNA as they once were and, with the improvement of technologies like augmented reality, perhaps we are entering an era of highly subjective, personalized virtual performance experiences. The future of live music in Austin may be experienced in goggles, or on tabletops.