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On Sunday, June 21, 2021, the San Antonio International Airport hosted a dance performance in honor of the 20th anniversary of the summer solstice.
Dancer, choreographer, and Artistic Director of Urban-15, Catherine Cisneros, along with artist and CAVS Fellow and alumnus Christopher Janney (SMVisS ’78), put on the performance to mark the longest day of the year.
Janney’s design, Passing Light, is a “solar sculpture that includes large colorful plexiglass squares embedded in the ceiling that project a grid of bold colors onto the Paseo Walkway in the parking garage,” according to a news release.
Cisneros will dance simultaneously while the sun is moving to create reflections on the walls and floors, the release said.
Chris Janney was a fellow at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies. Prior to his fellowship, he was a graduate student at CAVS and received the Master of Science in Visual Studies degree. His area of practice included music, sound, and environmental art.
Christopher Janney (SM’78) began “painting with sound” in 1976, combining architecture and jazz at MIT’s Environmental Art program under artist Otto Piene. Janney’s thesis “Soundstair” initiated the “Urban Musical Instruments” series whose large-scale installations — often using interactive electronics, colored glass, and sound — are now found in subways, airports, and other spaces around the United States and Europe. These “performance sculptures” give physical form to sound and movement while simultaneously making architecture more responsive and “alive.”
For more than thirty years, Christopher Janney has created numerous permanent interactive sound/light installations and performances, including Harmonic Convergence at the Miami Airport, REACH:NY at the 34th St. subway stop in New York, HeartBeat:mb with Sara Rudner and Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Soundstair, which was most recently installed at the Boston Children’s Hospital. He is the founder of the multi-media studio PhenomenArts, Inc.
Learn more about Christopher Janney.
