Website
Instagram: @portalofcollectiveimagination

Physical Description
The Portal of Collective Imagination is a 20-foot circular arch constructed from recycled aluminum, bamboo, and mycelium-based panels. By day, it appears as a luminous geometric halo rising from the playa, looking open, inviting, and quietly monumental. By night, it becomes a responsive environment: light ripples across the structure, projections bloom within its interior, and subtle soundscapes shift with human presence.
Inside the portal, translucent mesh panels serve as a canvas for real-time projection-mapped visuals. Embedded "whispering nodes" capture voices, breath, and tone, translating them into flowing poetic text and color. The structure is solar-powered, modular, and fully dismantlable. It is designed as a threshold between worlds to evoke feelings both ancient and futuristic.

Interactivity is the heart of the Portal. As participants approach, motion sensors awaken the structure with gentle pulses of light. Walking through the arch triggers visual and sonic responses unique to each body and movement. Participants may speak, hum, dance, sit quietly, or pass through quickly. Directional microphones invite whispered
words or questions, which are transformed into projected poetry and generative visuals. Every interaction contributes to a cumulative "memory field" that evolves throughout the event. The Portal does not instruct participants on how to behave. It listens and responds, allowing meaning to emerge organically through play, curiosity, reverence, or spontaneity. The artwork grows richer as more people engage, shaped by the
unpredictable intelligence of the city itself.

About the artist:
Kim Carson is a strategist, and founder, working at the intersection of art, AI and meaning-making. Her practice explores imagination as intelligence and AI as a medium for reflection, ritual, and collective storytelling. Carson is a frequent speaker and writer on creativity, AI, and the future of human purpose. Her practice centers multidimensional inclusion and accessibility, designing spaces where people of varied backgrounds, abilities, and modes of expression can participate fully.