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‍ ‍Present

  • HILDEGARD

    HILDEGARD

    New opera by Sarah Kirkland Snider draws on the life, love, and visions of Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th-century mystic and abbess, as she awaits papal approval of her divinations.

  • LIFE IS SCARY

    Music video collaboration with filmmaker Braden King and Will Oldham, developed between location footage shot in Nevada and studio work at NYU’s Brooklyn Navy Yard, using Unreal Engine and Gaussian splat environments.

  • EYE OF MNEMOSYNE

    Multimedia commissioned by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra for its centennial season. The piece presents memory embodied as a deity while illuminating the influence of George Eastman’s Kodak through a lens of nostalgia.

Historic

  • MASS FOR THE ENDANGERED

    Visual Album for Sarah Kirkland Snider’s seminal record, honoring Earth’s fragile beings.

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  • THE AGE OF ADZ

    Visual Design and Performance for
    Sufjan Stevens’ lauded space rock opera.

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  • PLANETARIUM

    Projection Design and Lyric Videos for the planetary-inspired, multimedia production.

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  • RIP SHAME

    Visual Design for Sofi Tukker’s worldwide tour, featuring an interactive Book Tree.

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  • ROAD TRIP

    Scenic and Projection Design for
    Bang on A Can’s 30th Anniversary.

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Futuristic

  • Joan of the City

    JOAN OF THE CITY (in development) is a city-specific, mixed-reality opera with libretto and score by Kamala Sankaram and direction by Kristin Marting, developed in collaboration with the clients of Mary’s Place and MICAH House.

    Working with projection, XREAL AR glasses, and urban space, I am designing visual instruments and environments that interact with five performing “Joans,” who sing arias drawn from client writings. Texts by unhoused women are translated into personal assets—appearing as objects, fragments, signals, and spatial compositions embedded within streets and buildings.

    The following examples show in-process developments of the opera’s antagonist and protagonist: a Shadow formed from collapsing, interfering data and structure, and a Communion constructed from responsive light, song, and call to action.

Deborah Johnson — also known as CandyStations —
is a multimedia artist, visual librettist, and educator.

She creates multifaceted visuals for stage and screen by weaving analog and digital processes through research, experimentation, and spiritual, heartfelt rigor.

She has collaborated with artists including Sufjan Stevens, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Sandbox Percussion,
Sofi Tukker, M83, Annie B. Parson, Ray LaMontagne, Alarm Will Sound, Bang on a Can, and Wilco —
with performances at Coachella, Eastman Theatre, Disney Concert Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music,
The Museum of Modern Art, MASS MoCA, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, The Fillmore,
and Wiener Konzerthaus.

She has created site-specific installations at SXSW, Lighthouse ArtSpace, Sundance, 92Y Tribeca, MoMA, Chicago’s Millennium Park, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, with residencies at MASS MoCA, The Experimental Television Center, NYU Navy Yard, Slalom Element Lab, and The Atlantic Center for the Arts.

She is a recipient of a New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Film & Video Grant in New Technology
for incorporating 4D volumetric technology in Hildegard, an award-winning opera by Sarah Kirkland Snider, produced by Beth Morrison Projects, and directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer.

A Professor at Pratt Institute, she teaches Time and Movement alongside Light, Color, and Design, building responsive visual worlds that expand the architecture of visual design and performance.

She presents regularly on performance design, synaesthetics, and the evolving relationship between classical and emerging technologies as an artist and educator.

Download a full CV of past lives and loves (PDF).

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