Tuesday, Nov. 12 was the opening night of the “Movie-Drome 2.0” production, put on jointly by Kindler Family Assistant Professor in Global Contemporary Art Brynn Hatton’s “Art and Technology” class and Visiting Professor of Film and Media Studies Lindsey Lodhie’s “Expanded Cinema” class. The project is a recreation of the original “Movie-Drome” by Stan VanDerBeek, who in 1965 created a spherical dome with multiple projectors displaying images of nature, drawings, cartoons and scenes from history.

The original goal of the “experience machine,” as VanDerBeek called it, was to promote world peace by making the viewers become introspective, to cross language and cultural barriers and to promote international cooperation. 

“We were not trying to improve or correct any faults of the original,” Lodhie said. “We were instead attempting to adapt the original and place it into a modern context to show that the experiment is still relevant today.” 

The Colgate University students’ adaptation of the concept was no less diverse. In Bernstein Hall’s Experimental Exhibition and Performance Studio, or “The Vault,” multiple projections displayed simultaneous side-by-side scenes of popular culture, American politics, Colgate security camera footage, travel logs, Halloween imagery, a time lapse of the construction of the Colgate Foggy Bottom Observatory, the history and evolution of western dance, psychedelic and hypnotic visuals and scenes of time lapsed recording of natural phenomena. The visuals were accompanied by a mix of the audio in all of the visual scenes on display and unique audio manipulation of synthesized soundscapes to make the audience feel uncentered. 

The variable kaleidoscope of images presented to the audience displayed the technical capabilities and unique benefits of non-traditional forms of media consumption. The project emerged from the subjects covered in the class Expanded Cinema and discussions from art and technology classes about the technical processes used to produce visual media, according to Lodhie. This remix successfully attracted audience members from the local city of Hamilton, N.Y., as well as Colgate students and professors. 

“It was a cool collaborative process,” contributing student artist senior Ethan West said. 

West’s exhibit focused on the evolution and contexts of western dance. He expressed that the disjointed appearance of the entire production was on purpose. 

“There was an idea in the beginning to have a common theme, but I’m glad that we didn’t do it,” West said. 

Instead, each artist was able to have full artistic license to be innovative and unique. 

West’s gratefulness for the opportunity to have artistic liberty was shared by his contributing artists, including seniors Kellie Couch, Rae Frankel, Harper Hollander and Bella Ohrt, whose exhibitions focused on Colgate archival footage, time-lapse images of natural phenomena, modern political events and psychedelic imagery, respectively. The exhibition brought together 12 contributing artists in total, all of whom were given the unique opportunity to bring their own artistic capabilities to the fore without compromising the artistic vitality of the whole. 

Part of the innovation of Colgate’s revival of the “Movie-Drome” was the addition of a performative element. Audience members joined contributing artists in waving a large white parachute up and down into the air, they then ran underneath it, trapping the air inside and creating a domed figure in the middle of the room. Once inside, audience members could see the images on the walls of the artificial dome, which provided a glimpse into how the original 1965 “Movie-Drome” would have appeared. 

“The parachute was to compensate for the dome,” Couch said. “It was also part of our goal of expanding the original into our own modern context, in addition to the scenes and images from modern pop-culture.” 

The 1965 “Movie-Drome” aimed at a formation of a collective and peaceful whole that VanDerBeek hoped would overcome verbal and semantic blocks. Honorable to this original goal — a Colgate adaptation of this classic experiment — the “Movie-Drome 2.0” was an exhibition that showcased the artistic talent and creativity of the Colgate student body and presented to a wide audience the relevance alternative methods of media consumption have in modern society.