The large-scale installation “Red Carpet in C” is the result of a long-standing collaboration between architect Peter Tolkin of TOLO Architecture and the artist Yunhee Min. The undulating fabric form reflects this collaboration, having been designed as both an object to be viewed and a space to be inhabited. As architecture, the piece fits within the tradition of decorative suspended ceilings that reaches back to the Renaissance. As art, the piece explores the perceptual characteristics of color, a principal subject of Min paintings.

Working with a group of more than 30 architecture student volunteers over a period of two months, “Red Carpet in C” was constructed of canvas fabric and more than 15,000 colored paper tubes. The design required the use of a parametric scripting program to ensure that the bands would take on the desired curvature under gravity as well as a dynamic structural modelling program to understand the behavior of such a soft structure. The heights and spacing of the cardboard tubes were used to control the specific amplitude of the parabolas in each of the bands, altering what would otherwise be a series of catenary curves. Using parametric software to design the piece is also what made it possible to determine the sizes, colors, and locations of the more than 300 varieties of tubes (given 28 sizes and 12 different colors). The piece was designed so that once hung in place, the curvature of the bands would play off against the classical proportions, meter, and time signature of UCR’s Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts historic atrium.

As suggested by the title of the piece, “Red Carpet in C” is also an exploration of the connections that exist between music, art and architecture. This comes from Tolkin and Min’s enthusiasm for the work of experimental music composers John Cage, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Of particular relevance to this piece are the unconventional notational systems these composers used to translate their non-normative works into projects that could be realized. The abstract visualizations they developed were used to transmit the character and structure of a musical piece, its “sonic image,” to the musicians, whilst still allowing some aspects of the piece to be interpreted (and therefore changed) by the performer. In “Red Carpet in C” the undulating parabolic bands and the pixelated field of color should be understood as translations of these sorts of indeterminate musical notational systems into three-dimensions. The perceptual and physiological characteristics of color, functioning as a kind of representation of musical tone, adding to the formal and experiential qualities of the piece. Like the work of these minimalist composers, “Red Carpet in C” employs a limited set of parameters, using repetition and variation (both color and curvature), to create a spatially evocative, temporal, and performative environment.