THE OCTAVE OF VISIBLE LIGHT:
A MEDITATION NIGHTCLUB
“Sensual and ocular for the audience, generating an incredibly profound experience that optically bewilders and hypnotizes.”– Whitewall Magazine
THE OCTAVE OF VISIBLE LIGHT: A MEDITATION NIGHTCLUB
Lia Chavez: The Octave of Visible Light (2015)
Presented by The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas in partnership with Art Production Fund
Artist-in-Residence Performance Installation
In The Octave of Visible Light: A Meditation Nightclub, artist Lia Chavez transforms the architecture of a nightclub into a radiant temple of technological ritual, synesthetic initiation, and neuro-responsive art. This immersive performance installation invites participants to experience their own consciousness as the source code of a transcendent sensory environment—where brainwaves become light, sound becomes meditation, and awareness becomes form.
Known for her pioneering explorations of light and consciousness, Chavez debuts a groundbreaking digital neurology system developed in collaboration with London-based creative technology studio rehab. Participants are invited to wear EEG headsets while Chavez guides them through a personalized meditation. As their brainwaves are read in real time, a custom-coded system transmits neural signals via Bluetooth into the surrounding space—modulating stroboscopic light and ambient sound based on the depth and frequency of each participant’s contemplative state.
“Mesmerizing.”
–The New York Times
What unfolds is a one-of-a-kind, bio-responsive audio-visual “set,” composed not by a DJ, but by the interior rhythms of the mind itself. The deeper a participant’s meditative focus, the more vividly the installation cycles through the entire octave of visible light and sound. The experience includes pre-recorded vocals by Erika Spring (Au Revoir Simone), paired with low-frequency sonic waveforms delivered non-invasively to the body—designed to synchronize the brain’s hemispheres and induce ecstatic stillness.
Conceptually, The Octave of Visible Light draws upon an extraordinary constellation of scientific and metaphysical influences: Isaac Newton’s synesthetic theories of color and tone, Winfried Otto Schumann’s discovery of the Earth’s resonant frequency, and the principles of bio-resonance frequency therapy. Chavez seamlessly merges these traditions into a single, live feedback system where the invisible becomes visible, and perception becomes performance.
“Chavez seems like a modern-day Franciscan in her conviction about the analogic ability of light to evoke the divine.”
– Image Journal
“A new type of nightclub.”
– Cool Hunting
More than an artwork, The Octave of Visible Light becomes a tool for transformation—a luminous mirror through which participants witness the architecture of their own awareness. By generating precisely choreographed correlations between neurobiological, sonic, and chromatic frequencies, the work invites a profound recognition: consciousness itself can sculpt reality. Light and sound function not only as materials, but as guides—shepherding the viewer into deeper contact with their own energetic presence.
This project is part of Chavez’s ongoing series On the Science of Mystical Vision, a long-term inquiry into the intersection of elevated states of consciousness, creative process, and technological expression. Her artist residency at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, curated in partnership with Art Production Fund, reimagines immersive art as both a contemplative practice and a collective awakening—where nightclub, laboratory, and temple converge into one transcendent experience.
“Engulfing and eternal.”
–PSFK
“An entirely new type of visceral experience.” – Whitewall Magazine
Details
The Octave of Visible Light: A Meditation Nightclub, 2015
Participatory installation and performance
Presented by Art Production Fund at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
Featuring an original multimedia biofeedback meditation technology co-invented by Lia Chavez and rehab
Credits
Artistic Director and Performer: Lia Chavez
Producer and Curator: Art Production Fund
Presenter: The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
Code and Hardware Developers: rehab
Neuroscience Consultants: Dr. Joydeep Bhattacharya and Dr. Caroline Di Bernardi Luft
Research Funding Bodies: Creativity Enhancement through Advanced Brain Mapping and Stimulation (CREAM) and Seventh Framework Programme
Documentation: Sam Cox
Selected Press
T: The New York Times Style Magazine