Dreamlands: Immersive Cinema and Art, 1905–2016

In Jenny Perlin’s sound work, Russian Orthodox church bells recorded on forty-eight tracks, each with a different ringing sound, form a canopy of bells over the space in which her film Twilight Arc is projected. Perlin drew inspiration from the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872–1915), whose unfinished epic performance involving light, music, and scent would have taken place in the foothills of the Himalayas and begun with the ringing of bells hung from clouds. Here the sound permeates the viewer’s experience of the otherwise silent film, providing an intermittent accompaniment to its mesmerizing colors.