Cosm and Holmes dub the experience of viewing “The Journey Within” inside one of theses domes as a form of “shared reality.” Neil Carty, vice president of Cosm Studio and Labs, describes shared reality as the connection that people feel when sharing a powerful experience. “That’s what shared reality is all about, experiencing something bigger than yourself,” Carty tells The Times., said the idea for this piece came to him during the pandemic.
To create the visuals, which blend with the remixed music of David Bowie, Radiohead, the Flaming Lips, Matthew Dear and others, Holmes used a laser cutter. With it, he created LED kaleidoscopes and laser sculptures. He then made video recordings of the world’s natural wonders, ranging from the glaciers of Antarctica to the blue lakes of northern Minnesota, where Holmes’ wife has a cabin.
Cosm’s 87-foot diameter 12K LED dome will come to Hollywood Park this spring for immersive shared reality experiences. “The idea was building that cathedral of light and color,” he says. “We went up to test at the [full-scale] Cosm dome in Utah, and it totally blew my mind. I was crying watching my piece because this format didn’t exist when I started making my art, but it’s the perfect format for what I’m doing and this idea of having that shared reality with people.
“The example I give is like on the McCartney tour, when he plays ‘Hey Jude,’ you can be anywhere in the world, and you can look at 10 people or 20 people, and everybody’s feeling the exact same thing. They’re singing ‘na-na-na’s’ together, and their hearts are in it.”Cosm venues strive to audibly re-create this sort of communal experience — the company uses spatial audio, which Holmes describes as “having cellos that spin all around the room.