By Lori Wood, Lucas Artists Residency Manager
Above: Entering the studio of LAP Fellow Yasuhiro Usui.
When the Lucas Artists Fellows entered Yasuhiro Usui’s LAP composer’s studio, they were confronted by a massive white sail strung tightly across the large studio in a diagonal. Floor pillows welcomed the artists to settle in and explore sound. Poets Monica Sok and Danez Smith took up pillows to the left, forming the poetry zone. Tongan visual artist Kalisolaite ‘Uhila stretched out prone to the right. Musicians David Benoit and Henry Threadgill took seats, Threadgill next to a small table with its top covered with an intriguingly poetic array of objects: a marble, an apple, an empty soda can, a stone, two pennies and a crab shell from last night’s dinner. Visual artist Kio Griffith, who is at the LAP collaborating with Usui, handed Threadgill a thin wand with a light on its tip: the new endoscope Griffith had delivered to the LAP two weeks ago. And the lights went out and the sound experience began.
Above: Lucas Artists Fellow Henry Threadgill casts projected images using the endoscope.
Across the sail, Griffith projected images drawn from the Montalvo grounds, mixed with live images that Threadgill created live, while drawing the lens of the endoscope closely across the objects on the table. The images washed over the screen in staccato: nutrition information from the can, the spines of the crab’s back, nameless patterns.
  |   |
Above: Images projected on the white sail.
And to these images, Usui responded with sound that emerged as free-form emanations called up by the visual score, picked out on his electric guitar. Griffiths processed the images and sound through the sound board set up just outside the doors of the composer’s studios.
After the presentation, LAP Fellow Yasuhiro Usui emerged from behind the screen to show the other artists the way he uses the electric guitar to produce a range of unique sounds.