Audiences will be immersed in interactive architectural spaces at Ritual nightclub during Kosmic, Carleton’s annual architecture event, Jan. 21, according to Kosmic director and third-year architecture student Alison Harason.
At this year’s sold-out event, architecture students create installations using the night’s theme of interference as a guideline, Harason said.
“You would go into a space and you would change something and alter it by being present there,” she said. “I wanted it to be more about the space and I like the idea of interference as a kind of disruption.”
Second-year architecture student Andrea Chiney is helping to design what she describes as a “nylon womb.”
For the installation, pantyhose weighed down by sand will stretch from the ceiling to create a sheer maze. People will be able to walk between the pantyhose, connecting and reconnecting parts, she said.
Harason said she wanted the entire nightclub to be interactive.
A sculpture will run up and down the staircase connecting the floors, certain standing surfaces will have holes that change the projected image, and booths will have tentacles.
Last year, architecture students transformed a neo-gothic church with translucent figures among the arches and light-strung pews as bands played at the altar and DJs spun in the basement for Kosmic Light.
A host of local acts will also participate, including third-year law student and DJ Sebastian Lowes, a.k.a. RAINMAN.
RAINMAN said the image of a woman whipping herself from last year’s event stuck out in his mind.
“There was a sheet of painted blood and she was just chilling there, naked,” Lowes said.
Harason could not confirm whether or not the same performance artist would return, but promised Kosmic would be one-of-a-kind.
“I’ve never been to another party like that,” Harason said. “There’s nothing else like this happening.”