Assistant Professor of Architecture, Catie Newell and student of her GLOW Workshop and alumni Lisa Sauve (M.Arch '11) and Adam Smith (M.Arch '11) of Synecdoche Design will be participating in Flint Public Art Project's "Free City Festival" May 3-5th.

The GLOW Workshop is a research setting at the University of Michigan that collapses investigations of material, site, and illumination, or lack thereof, under the premise that light and matter together have the ability to make, alter, and obscure space. For the Free City Festival, GLOW Workshop has created two installations: one in the Chevy-in-the-Hole site called Groundwork, and the second, a permanent installation in the Spencer's Funeral Home called Frequency.

Playfully responding to the myriad of textures and embedded traces of previous activity throughout the site, Groundwork traces the remnants of the railroad tracks creating an addition to the hardscape that projects and pulls upwards. The glowing installation integrates bio-plastics and a cloth substrate that pulses and fades in response to its occupation.

Frequency is an interactive glowing presence embedded within the reveal between the mirrored double staircases within Spencer's Funeral Home. Sensing the quantity and location of the occupants, the work registers habitation and movement through the pace of a subtle pulse and the intensity of illumination.

The GLOW Workshop teams consist of: Missy Ablin, Amy Anderson, Steve Anliot, Ali Askarinejad, Mary Ayling, Robin Chhabra, Matt Dolan, Lindsay Evans, Reid Fellenbaum, Claire Kang, Xiang Liu, Adrian Lopez, Cameron Van Dyke, Yao Wang, Sam Xu, Ning Zhou, and instructors Catie Newell and Alex Watanabe.

Sauve and Smith's Ann Arbor-based design firm Synecdoche (synecdochedesign.com/) presents Second Sight, a performance combining dance and architecture, built space and moving bodies.

Audience members sit among a set of mirrored panels which reflect images of the dancers, but never allow a fully direct view. Sauve and Smith were also semi-finalist in the Flat Lot competition hosted by Flint Public Art Project this spring.

Visit the Free City Festival website for more information about the event.

Visit the Flint Public Art Project website for more information about the project.