Michigan State University’s Beaumont Tower came alive with light, sound, and animation during this year’s Halloween carillon concert, “The Ringing 2: Shadows Rise.” The event showcased the artistry of University Carillonist Jonathan Lehrer and the artwork and animations created by students in the Department of Theatre.
Lehrer presented this concert for the first time in 2024, and judging by the growth of the crowd to more than 260 people this year, it is a tradition that is here to stay for a while. By partnering with students in the Compositing and Special Effects for Stage and Screen (THR 337) class, taught by Professor of Integrated Performance Media Design Alison Dobbins, a delightful new visual component is now part of the concert presentation.
For more than three weeks, 14 students in THR 337 planned, refined, and finalized their visual pieces, drawing inspiration from recordings provided by Lehrer. Three MFA candidates in the Department of Theatre then engineered the projection system, mapping the students’ work directly onto the face of Beaumont Tower to accompany Lehrer’s live, hour-long carillon performance on Oct. 30.
“I was excited about a project such as this for the students to have the challenge of designing at such a large scale,” Dobbins said. “Students were prompted to incorporate the architecture and the meaning behind the music. These three focuses — scale, architecture, meaning — provided great growth opportunities. We all learned a lot from doing this, and I am very pleased with how it came out. The response has been very positive.”
The evening outdoor audio-visual concert featured a range of spooky tunes, from 15th-century ecclesiastical chant to modern classic horror themes. Looking ahead, Dobbins would like to expand on the project for next year.
“I’d love to map to more sides of the building — maybe do a few different buildings — so it could be a performance across the whole circle that audience members walk from
one to the next,” she said. “Big dreams and schemes, but right now I’m very happy with the result.”
This semester, students in Dobbins’ class also created animations for the Division Street garage as part of the “Read for your Rights” event on Oct. 3, and they are currently developing an animation for an event at MSU’s Abrams Planetarium in November.
“For the last big project in the class, the students are playing with a very unique interaction between audience and media,” Dobbins said. “Looking up at a big dome of the planetarium is a very different way of taking in media. It is a bit hard to conceptualize, which is why this project is towards the end of the semester.”
Dobbins also is looking for other opportunities for her students to bring digital art to public spaces.
“I hope to partner again with East Lansing or other MSU groups to do more mapping on or near campus,” she said. “These ‘happenings’ are great chances for students to see the immediate impact of their work and for these spaces to become temporary social events.”
“There’s something about bell sounds that are themselves a little eerie,” Lehrer said in an interview with WKAR. “It’s also culturally shrouded in sort of mystery of the tower and who is inside and are there hauntings and all of that. I’m really big into artistic experiences that expand beyond the traditional frames of what we consider to be a concert or a movie or an art exhibit. I like beautiful things in unusual contexts.”
The original version of this article, written by Kim Popiolek with photos by Ryan Frederick, was published by the College of Arts and Letters.
