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Khaki King - The Neck is a Bridge to the Body 2018
Project type
Immersive | Theater
Date
2018
Location
Kirkland, WA, USA - Kirkland Performing Arts Center
Role
Local Theater Technician
Lighting Design & Stage Design | Artist Liaison | Stage Manager | Projection Integration
Artist - Khaki King
Artist Overview: Kaki King
Hailed by Rolling Stone as "a genre unto herself," Kaki King is a visionary guitarist and composer known for her percussive, virtuoso fingerstyle technique. Over a 20-year career, she has:
Redefined the instrument: Shifting from traditional playing to using the guitar's body as a percussion surface and its neck like a keyboard.
Collaborated broadly: Worked with artists like David Byrne, the Foo Fighters, and Timbaland, and contributed to the Into the Wild soundtrack.
Bridged tech and art: Frequently uses digital interfaces and custom software to trigger real-time visual events.
Tour & Show
The tour is a one-hour immersive experience that focuses entirely on the guitar's inner life.
Concept: The show starts as a "creation story" where notes create images, eventually exploring the guitar's "skeleton" and "nervous system".
Digital Collaboration: Created with Glowing Pictures (known for work with Animal Collective and Beastie Boys), the show utilizes MadMapper and VDMX for real-time visual performance.
The Instrument: King uses a signature Ovation Adamas guitar, specifically customized with a white finish to serve as a high-contrast projection screen.
Interaction: Sound signals from the guitar are analyzed by software to trigger specific visual responses on both the guitar's surface and a larger background screen.
Kaki King's The Neck Is a Bridge to the Body is a landmark multimedia performance where the guitar ceases to be just an instrument and becomes a living, projection-mapped canvas. Debuting in 2014, the show uses the guitar as a "tabula rasa" to tell a creation myth through light and sound.
A Technician’s Perspective: Kirkland Performance Center (April 2018)
Collaborating on this specific tour stop allowed me to move beyond standard lighting operation and into a creative partnership that the touring team deeply admired.
Duality in Lighting Design: I implemented a "soft approach" to the house lights, creating a duality concept using hard left and hard right side lighting. This focused the illumination away from the projection screen and the guitar, preserving the clarity of the digital media while adding a distinct level of depth to Kaki’s physical presence on stage.
Atmospheric Extension: To bridge the gap between the screen and the room, I programmed moving lights with a slowly rippling gobo effect across the theater walls. This matched the fluid visual style of the digital projections, effectively extending the art from the stage into the audience's surroundings.
Technical Synergy: The touring artists noted that this design reinforced the show's immersive nature. By concentrating the light and adding textural depth, we ensured the projection-mapped guitar remained the focal point while the entire theater felt like a part of the performance's "nervous system."
