fracture modulation: an evening at Spectra Studio curated by johans.
//flyer design by Zi Zhang
CURATORIAL & PRODUCTION LOG: SPECTRA STUDIO
The path to this showcase began during my feedback sessions with Harvey Moon as I prepared en busca de la nada as my thesis project. Following the presentation of configuration_C on the IMAX screen at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and after he experienced what the project had evolved into, our conversations shifted toward a concrete activation at Spectra Studio. The terms established a unique production landscape: I would retain complete creative control, contingent upon fully organizing and curating the event myself.
Immediately following a trip to Peru, I began mapping out the structural and experiential details that I later presented to the Spectra board. As a curator, my thesis was precise: I wanted to position the night as a collective showcase of audiovisual (AV) sets that actively fractured the traditional concept of the live AV set—deeply mirroring the formal deconstruction techniques utilized throughout en busca de la nada.
To build a diverse yet structurally cohesive lineup, I approached two artists whose individual practices I held in high regard: LZ and Cardin Chung.
The Lineup: Three Vectors of Media Fracture
LZ: Archival Resonance
I first crossed paths with LZ during my first live performance ever—a showcase for the Performance Technology curriculum back in 2023. I was presenting AMAZERDAH, an anthological DJ set designed as a sonic bridge. It juxtaposed early fragments from VISIONS—my first transmedia collection that was left unfinished—with a heavy curation of Peruvian music spanning ambient, shamanic chants (ícaros), organica, timeless garage, and contemporary textures. The set was an intentional dive into the mystique of the Amazonian cosmovision. LZ recognized the distinct sound palettes I was pulling from, we talked tech after the show, and we stayed in close contact. We both shared a deep interest in researching ancestral memory and using sound as material. Tracking his sonic evolution over the next couple of years left me incredibly eager to construct a shared space with him; this curated night became the ideal catalyst. He sent me his demos for Far East Renaissance and after hearing them I needed to hear them loud in a room with visuals. There was a special spirituality that brought me to a space of immersion within the sonic landscapes he built. Not only did the treatment of sound and bass echoed construx, but the spirituality of his work deeply resonated with the curation.
Cardin Chung: Spatial Extensions
I met Cardin through ZAP, a community and social collective for media artists where I served as both a board member and active participant. My initial introduction to his work was an installation he mounted for Janae’s thesis exhibition: a tactile, fragmented landscape of shattered mirrors, mylar, and custom touch-sensors that allowed participants to collectively play a physical melody. Did I mention that Cardin is crazy enough to do a double-major in music technology and dance? Cracked.
Later, a documentation video on his Instagram caught my eye—a live performance where Cardin’s animated visual arrays reacted fluidly to an interactive glove he wore while dancing across the stage. I knew his physical approach to digital matter belonged in the lineup, so I reached out to see if he could present the piece at Spectra. He agreed immediately.
System Scale: Daniel Mangiaracino and The Digital Lighthouse
During the production scheduling phase, I structured the event layout to allocate an exact 30-minute block for both LZ and Cardin to maintain a balanced narrative pacing. While LZ's format scaled effortlessly, Cardin’s original choreography was only clocked at around 6 minutes.
Instead of cutting the block short, I encouraged him to use the technical infrastructure of Spectra to expand the piece into a sustained, long-form performance. In response, Cardin scaled the operation—looping in composer, dancer, and digital artist Daniel Mangiaracino to flesh out a complete narrative world and full-scale spatial environment, ultimately debuting as The Digital Lighthouse. Cardin and Daniel constructed a space of digital, emotional vulnerability, wonder and the search for the unknown, which needless to say, connected conceptually with LZ and construx while bringing a new and refreshing perspective.
Technical Direction: For the Love of the Game
Curating the talent was only half the battle; the real work was acting as Technical Director and technical intermediary. I ran the tech rehearsals, serving as the central point of contact to translate artist requirements to the house system and clarify complex signal routings. The engineering crew at Spectra Studio provided seamless backend support, keeping the hardware pipeline running flawlessly.
Concurrently, I focused on optimizing my own performance architecture:
TouchDesigner Optimization: I meticulously cleaned my local canvas, rendering heavy real-time lookups into fixed texture maps and streamlining sequences to maximize frame-rate stability.
Media Re-rendering: I recalculated and re-rendered the episodic film elements of en busca de la nada to prevent spatial distortion and perfectly match the venue's custom projection aspect ratios.
Sonic Progress: I kept regular checkpoints with composers Taro Arthur and Evan Williams to ensure the live orchestration and mixing stages remained entirely on track.
Marketing Architecture & Archive Capture
The outreach strategy relied heavily on grass-roots momentum and intentional design. I cut a promotional reel for social channels, and tapped my close friend and long-time collaborator, Zi Zhang, to design the digital flyer and promotional assets. Their industrial, research-paper aesthetic perfectly framed the event's identity, generating immediate traction that capped our RSVPs within days and resulted in a packed house of highly responsive, engaged viewers.
To preserve the ephemeral nature of the night without falling into the trap of clean, sterile digital documentation, I commissioned photographer Darcy Hatcher to document the evening exclusively on analog film. The grain of the physical film captured the raw, authentic reality of what went down: a room of independent multimedia practitioners coming together entirely for the pure love of the game, sharing the collective magic of fracturing media with an audience that felt it.
END-NOTE :)
I feel an immense wave of gratitude toward the Spectra Studio production crew (Harvey, China, Jay, and Carrie), Zi Zhang, Nicolas Diaz-Magaloni, Darcy Hatcher, Andres Garcia, everyone who packed out the space, and of course, LZ, Cardin, Daniel, Taro, and Evan. We built an ecosystem that was fractured, diverse, technical, and uncompromisingly human.
