Curtis Godino & Co. Discorporate at Peering From Blue Shadows

To those visitors with more sensitivity to light, the walk from the entrance of Third Man Records around back to the event space in The Blue Room can play tricks on your eyes, and I don’t just mean Chris Clawson’s forced-perspective mural. Out on the street, the sweltering sun of the last Friday in July — reported that week ad nauseam as the hottest month on record — was finally low enough in the sky to call it dusk. The blue haze contrasted with the long, brightly lit corridor into the complex, which opened up into TMR’s courtyard patio, again awash in dim twilight. Just when the ol’ pupils seemed to settle into their new surroundings, I opened up the door to the ticket counter in its radiant golden atrium, another stark shift. When the next door opened up into The Blue Room, it took a second for my eyes to dilate enough to evaluate just what I was seeing. 

Friday’s Peering From Blue Shadows pop-up was the latest installment in a series of seasonal art-and-music events curated by artist Olivia Blanchard. For this one-night-only summertime happening, Blanchard featured the artwork of fellow locals Bunny Ames and Jameson Gerdon. Ames, whose projects include psychedelic celebration Far Out Fest, makes video installations that create weirdly disjointed sensations by making the viewer into a participant. Producer and songwriter Gerdon is also a multimedia visual artist. With help from a stellar crew of Nashville musicians, recent New York transplant Curtis Godino provided the soundtrack for the evening; the conceit was that he was presenting the score he’d written to a legendary Italian art film short called “Discorporation,” whose only remaining print was destroyed in a fire. Without a film to show, there’d instead be an array of projected and manipulated visuals.

As I strolled in, the low-watt glow of coiled filaments struck me from across the matte cobalt concrete chamber. Observers were surrounding a display of whitish lamps of various heights. Much closer to me was a pair of antiquated TVs mounted back to back, each screen facing a seat; the two setups mirrored each other. This was Ames’ installation, and she was showing users how to interact with her work. Cameras facing each seat transmitted a low-fidelity image of the sitters onto the screens, blended with other imagery that Ames curated and manipulated. Though I didn’t get to participate, it was amusing watching people react to being a part of the installation.

Getting a closer look at Gerdon’s lamps, I noticed that each of them was coated in thick globs of a papier-mâché-like substance. While some of the structures had comparatively smooth textures, others were rough, like tree bark or an old popcorn ceiling. Though the lamps were uniform in color, they were different sizes and shapes; some were like candelabras, others like limbs arranged to support a bulb dangling beneath. They seemed to form their own social circle, as if interacting with one another and mimicking the conversations of the people around them.

At the back of the stage was a white fabric sheet that spanned the full width and height of the wall behind it, and various instruments were awaiting their players. Beyond visual art projects like the Droopy Eye Liquid Lightshow, Godino has been the ringleader of or co-conspirator on several musical projects, like NYC acid-pop vocal outfit The Midnight Wishers and one of my favorite rising stars of the Nashville underground, purveyors of warped, bleak grooving post-psychedelia Crystal Egg.

Before long, Godino sauntered over to his setup of synthesizers, joined by the rest of the ensemble assembled for the “Discorporation” adventure. Sans his Crystal Egg bandmates Jessica McFarland and Ryan Donoho, Godino played on Friday with flutist Caroline Cronin, Parker James on the vibraphone, guitar wizard Dillon Watson, drummer Walker Mimms and bassist Jack Lawrence. 

The projector fired up and the light-and-sound experience was underway. The fabric spanning the stage was just a little loose, an undulating movie screen that unpredictably manipulated the images of the black-and-white film in tune with the air currents in the room. The music recalled the early U.K. art-school music of Soft Machine or Van der Graaf Generator — bending rock ’n’ roll into something simultaneously more orchestrated and less formulaic. 

The hour I spent watching the haunting images was truly captivating. Though I occasionally looked down to check in on what the band was doing, they more or less dissolved into the total experience. Often, what moves the audience at a show is making some kind of personal connection with the musicians through the performance; this presentation turned that traditional idea on its head, but it was still intriguing and affecting.

The end of the set marked the end of the event. As the crowd left the subdued glow of the filament bulbs, the TVs’ cathode-ray tubes and the projections, it was finally fully dark outside.