Behind Newfields' new Lume art: Hoosiers share how they made their cutting-edge work

Creating a world with immersive projections that cascade over 30,000 square feet is no easy task. Add to that the pressure of knowing your work will play inside Newfields' most-attended exhibit ever.

Four Hoosiers — Charlie Borowicz, Brian Trippi, Jessica Dunn and Landon Caldwell — have accomplished these feats, becoming the first artists based in the state to have their work play inside The Lume. They created 3-minute featurettes that play before the main subject of Claude Monet and 19th-century artists in Paris.

Dunn marveled at the experience when she first saw her and co-collaborator Caldwell's work come to life inside the gallery.

"It's just amazing to be able to step inside an animation like that and to see all this work that you've been doing for months — and like 1,000 hours I put into it, practically," Dunn said.

The multisensory, cinema-like fourth-floor gallery hosted more than 235,000 people after its July 2021 opening, the museum announced last May. The Hoosier artists' work, which launched in March and April, will be up until early 2024. Tickets are available at discovernewfields.org.

The artists spoke with IndyStar in recent weeks about how they combined visions that explore Indiana wildlife, systems of control and artificial intelligence with cutting-edge animation, video and soundscapes. Their work came with plenty of challenges, like waiting out day-long rendering times and aligning video layers pixel by pixel between the floors and walls.

Here are the stories behind the artwork and hidden surprises to look for when you go.

An ode to Indiana wildlife

"Reverie Garden" by animator Dunn and composer Caldwell is no ordinary walk in a Hoosier backyard. Instead, it takes you across a pond where frogs bob around lily pads, under the surface alongside an emerald-hued fish, and into the woods where an inquisitive deer meets your eye before sipping from a stream.

The collaborators wanted to create a dreamlike, interactive world that mimics nature by using frame-by-frame and computer-assisted animation.

"That was one bit of inspiration we had was this sort of awe that you feel as a child for nature and how you can return to nature as an adult and still catch that awe," Caldwell said.

The duo drew on scenes from the White River, Crown Hill Cemetery and from Jerome, Ind., near where Dunn's mom grew up. Dunn uses the skill she learned from studying painting and sculpture at the Herron School of Art and Design in her animations. Caldwell, who runs record label Medium Sound, began creating what he calls sonic environments after touring with bands.

Dunn and Caldwell, who are based in Indianapolis, designed "Reverie Garden" to give people different experiences depending on where they're standing. Enter the cylinder-shaped gallery, for example, to watch a night scene with bioluminescent mushrooms that radiate neon colors.

Caldwell's soundtrack emulates the chirps of birds and insects in a surreal and synthesized manner. Layers of sound on top of a base composition differ depending on where viewers stand.

"You control the mix, if you will," Caldwell said. "It's really fun to put that sort of power in the hands of the listener so the listener kind of becomes the conductor."

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Playing with the boundaries of what's recognizable

The familiar and unfamiliar play across the walls in Borowicz's "Semblant." While a dancer clad in white jumps and twirls, for example, a reddish-brown insect-like creature twists its body as its uneven legs sway. If you're trying to figure out exactly what you're seeing and how you feel about it, well, that's the point.

"These are all laced throughout 'Semblant': systems of control, dichotomies, looking at things in relationship," he said. "I'm really interested in: Why is something fascinating vs. boring? Why is something a little scary vs. interesting?"

For the video that mixes live action and computer-created footage, Borowicz used recordings of women dancers and wrestlers in the visuals and incorporated the sounds of their bodies hitting the floor and slapping against one another into his soundscape. He also gathered sound while shooting video of trees and underwater environments, among other spots.

Borowicz, who splits time between Iowa and Indianapolis, studied fine-art photography at Ball State University and later became interested in video. The Lume, he said, offers avenues to artists that TV, film and simple video art do not.

"In the Lume space, you can let things rest. You can have a wall that exists on its own and has this vibe," he said. "Right around the corner is something else. So you don't really have to cut from it because the viewer can turn and look and they're surrounded."

Artwork with artificial intelligence as collaborator

While discussions rage about whether AI chatbots are plotting to end us all, Trippi has chosen a more collaborative approach. With "Into the Latent Space," Trippi created an artistic interpretation of how AI might look at the world and composed a synth-wave-type musical score.

Built into Trippi's Lume animation are metaphors that show how AI could reshape society and government, like a 3D model of Venus, which represents ancient Rome, spinning and bursting into tiny particles.

Earning a master's degree in data science at Indiana University prompted Trippi to create art with technology, which he's been doing for about 15 months. For the Lume animation, he inputted his own ideas and tweaked the program's results into a piece that combines his vision with welcome surprises.

"Sometimes, just sort of magical moments that happen with AI will give you something completely unexpected but incredibly beautiful at the same time," said Trippi, a music producer based in Bloomington.

With the revolutionary technology will come challenges to sort out, he said. In the meantime, Trippi wants "Into the Latent Space" to express excitement about the positive change AI innovation can bring. 2

"That's my hope, anyway," he said, "that it will sort of spawn some type of new movement of creativity."

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Contact IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339 or d.bongiovanni@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter: @domenicareports.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Behind Newfields' new Lume art: Hoosiers share vision of featurettes