CINCINNATI — Robby Blum opens a red tub. He can't find what he's looking for, so he opens another one. This one is yellow. He’s standing outside the Andrew J. Brady Music Center, and he’s looking for a rubber mallet.
There's a U-Haul truck behind him.
“Part of the artistic process is just looking through boxes,” Blum said.
When he finds the mallet, he tosses it to one of his friends — who doesn’t even try to catch it. He's here with a group of engineers turned artists turned friends who eventually turned themselves into a collective to make cool art for BLINK.
They call themselves Kemper Sauce Studios.
WATCH: See how yelling powers this BLINK project
It started when Blum went to BLINK almost 10 years ago and thought: I could do that. But he knew he couldn’t do it by himself.
So Blum got this group of friends together, applied to the next festival and got in. He and his team began designing the studio’s project for this edition of BLINK about a year ago.
“We don’t get paid from this,” said Brian Bailey, a software engineer for the studio.
And their studio is Blum's basement.
“We’ve been making a lot of strange sounds in the basement,” said Alicia Blum, another member of the studio.
Alicia describes her job as “keeping the smoke in the wires.” And there’s always a lot of wires. And lights. Because the group is making something called Y.E.L.L.E.D. — pronounced "yell ED."
It’s a 1,000-square-foot tunnel of lights, hooked up with microphones on each end that react to your screams. And the louder you yell, the brighter the lights glow.
“Because everyone has something to yell about right now,” Robby said.
At Elm Street Plaza, Daniel Shields climbs into an orange lift. He hooks a safety harness onto the side and slowly rises upward. He’s attaching lights that will bring his installation to life.
"It’s more UV light then I’ve ever put in one concentrated area," Shields said. "So I don’t even know what it’s going to look like."
He laughs. Because he can't believe this is his life. Shields describes himself as an artist, architect and engineer. He’s wearing an orange hat with fuzzy ears while he tells me this.
And he just returned home from a show in Kansas. He says he now makes about half his income from interactive art displays.
“It all started because of BLINK,” Shields said.
His specialty is yarn. And his BLINK exhibit is called String Theory for Dummies Vol. 2.
"Bigger and better," Shields said.
I ask how much yarn goes into the piece. He thinks about it and smiles.
“Miles and miles,” Shields said.
Then, he thinks about it some more. There is yellow caution tape up around the piece.
"It’s going to be completely chaotic," Shields said. "I can’t wait.”
He has some of the yarn in the back of his van. Shields apologizes as he opens the door. Because he also has electrical tape. And litter boxes turned into storage. Plus wires and chairs.
“That’s just the very tip of the iceberg,” Shields said. "This is going to be so ridiculous."
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