This project began in 2023, when I purchased an 8,500 square foot historic theater with my studio mate Ron Watters for $40,000.  The building was once a cinema, a doctor’s office, and most recently, a Black Masonic Lodge for the order of the Eastern Stars. 

The building sits on a desolate block of Davison Avenue, the nation’s oldest highway. It is across the street from Conant Gardens, one of Detroit’s most prominent historically-Black neighborhoods. Since the 1960s, Conant Gardens has played an outsized role in the cultural landscape of the city, producing such musical legends as: The Dramatics, The Detroit Emeralds, Shirley Jones, The Jones Girls, The 4 Tops, Amp Fidler, Waajeed, J Dilla, and Slum Village. Much of this neighborhood’s rich history is unknown to the general public. 

I have a strong personal connection to this project; as a teenage hip hop artist making music in Detroit in the 90’s, I was profoundly shaped by the artists who came from Conant Gardens.  Some of them remain my close collaborators today. 

Black Portal grows out of my desire to excavate history while simultaneously carving open a space for a myriad of potential futures to flow through. In my current creative practice, I combine architecture, sound, video art, and interactive technologies to create alternate worlds. Over the course of my career, I have struggled to find venues that can incubate, much less present, this type of immersive work. Once completed, Black Portal will be a first-of-its kind performance venue in Detroit and one of very few nationally. 

Black Portal Instrument. The instrument consists of an array of microphones, strategically placed to capture the sounds of the building in its BEING state: wind passing through broken windows, wildlife scurrying across floors, rain falling through holes in the roof. These sounds will combine to form a multichannel stream that I manipulate with drum machines and samplers in live performances.

Database of text and sound. This database will contain deconstructed sonic fragments from Detroit music legends who got their start in close proximity to the building. It will also include the text of lyrics from these artists’ discographies.

Conant Gardens Generator (Prototype 1)

Activate the building as decision-maker. Working with the data that flows in from the sonic outputs from the building, I will use  microcomputers to synthesize and interpret that data as lyrics drawn from the database. These will be viewable online and via any wifi-connected display. In its rest state, the display will stream the text of entire songs uninterrupted. As the sounds from the building change their pitch or frequency, the system’s algorithm will splice words and stanzas from the lyrics of different artists, generating ever-evolving compositions.

Building as DJ / composer. Building upon the technology described above, I will eventually empower the building to compose its own music from the sonic fragments contained in the database: the sound of rain is programmed to trigger a baseline from a Dramatics song. The sound of a squirrel entering the building mixes in a vocal track from a J Dilla song. Through these compositions we will begin to experience the building as a creative subject, not merely a real estate object.