mind plasma! TJ Richter - Slowdancing with Stingrays (WPCA 04/06/01)

LOVE & CHEAP TECHNOLOGY

My favorite photography store girl, Steph White, had beautifully deep, white sparkling skin that was almost three-dimensional, especially when surrounded by iridescent precision-ground German lens:

"You've got that preciously prismatic Venus De Milo rainbow glow, soaring with ice crystals in alto-cirrus clouds at twenty-five thousand feet, shattering sharp shards of violent violets, tourniquets of turquoise twisting in bizarre quasars of stars."

I made the cardboard and duct tape costume breakthrough at this event. I had already transitioned myself from performing in cloths to white long underwear, projecting a psychedelic oil lamp on body. When I discovered white duct tape at my local hardware store my mind went, ka-CHINK! I pulled a bunch of large cardboard boxes out of a dumpster and went to work. I cut a stingray shape out of the cardboard, reinforced it with white duct tape, then built a harness to mount the shape on my back (by measuring dimensions off my trusty backpack). It worked surprisingly well! The stingray shape was super-light and the harness did not restrict my movements at all, I could jump about, wail my arms around, like I wasn't wearing it at all. When I got to the venue, Allyson Bahr, one of the organizers, wanted to try it on as a goof, so I said "OK." When she stepped in front of the oil lamp for the first time I was blown away, it was humanoid psychedelic stingray! I can still see the image in my mind's eye. Considering the materials, the stingray outfit looked way better than it should have. I learned a cosmic lesson in stagecraft that day: all you need is a cheap white surface, you can project anything you want on it, and it will look amazingly!

Local Solo, Walkers Point Center for the Arts (WPCA), Milwaukee Wisconsin, April 6, 2001.

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