Dissolution Room: The Digital Cave

Dissolution Room is a collaborative installation by David Bird, assistant professor of music technology and digital media in Notre Dame’s Department of Music, and Cecilia Kim, assistant professor of film in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, that explores the sensory and spatial qualities of a cave as a framework for examining extractivist labor, digital preservation, and data accumulation. Integrating high-resolution video, spatialized audio, and live performance, the installation reimagines the cave as both a historical site of human activity and a metaphor for digital storage and cultural memory.

Dissolution Room builds on Bird’s and Kim’s interdisciplinary work in music composition, performance, and video art by combining field recording from geological caves, performances by the vocal ensemble Ekmeles, and moving image art into an immersive, responsive digital cave. By slowing down time and countering digital fatigue, Dissolution Room encourages viewers to reconsider the intersections of technology, materiality, and temporality in an era dominated by accelerated digital culture.

Credits

Cecilia Kim

Cecilia Kim is a video artist and assistant professor of Film at the University of Notre Dame. She collects and archives stories in the form of digital videos, where 3D-rendered images are combined with lens-based footage and text. Kim has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington (VA), The Kreeger Museum (DC), Hamiltonian Artists (DC), Kaplan Gallery (MD), The Immigrant Artist Biennial (NY), CICA Museum (Gimpo, Korea), and Pluripotent Art Space (Seoul, Korea). She was a recipient of the The Trawick Prize, Washington Project for the Arts Wherewithal Grant, and Hamiltonian Artists Fellowship. Kim was an artist in residence at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists' Residency, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Kunstnarhuset Messen, among others. She received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Cecilia Kim

David Bird

David Bird is a composer, producer, multimedia artist, and assistant professor of music technology and digital media in Notre Dame’s Department of Music. His work explores the dramatic potential of electroacoustic and multimedia environments, often highlighting the relationships between technology and the individual. Bird's compositions have been performed at venues such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, as well as festivals including the Gaudeamus Festival, Wien Modern, SPOR Festival, MATA Festival, Musica Electronica Nova Festival, and Festival Mixtur. He is the recipient of a 2021 Fromm Music Foundation Commission from Harvard University, a 2021 Cultural Foundation Schloss Wiepersdorf Fellowship, a 2018 Austrian Federal Chancellery / KulturKontakt Austria Artist Residency, the 2018 Giga-Hertz Award (Honorable Mention), the 2016 BMI Student Composer Award, and a 2016 Gaudeamus Award (Nominee).

David Bird

Ekmeles

Ekmeles is a vocal ensemble dedicated to the performance of new and rarely-heard works as well as gems of the historical avant garde. They have a special focus on microtonal works and have been praised for their “extraordinary sense of pitch” by the New York Times. They are the recipients of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s 2023 Ensemble Prize, the first American group to receive the honor.

Ekmeles

Funding & Support

This is a partner program of the 2027 Notre Dame Arts Biennial, supported with funding from the Notre Dame Arts Initiative.

This project is also made possible with funding from the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good.