The Asylum: A Tribute to David Cope
June 27, 2025
Presented by CultureHub LA
The Asylum is an experiential recreation of composer and AI pioneer David Cope’s legendary home laboratory, where he worked among his beloved collection of over 200 wind chimes.
Filmmaker Jae Shim and sound designer Mike James Gallagher, in collaboration with CultureHub LA Technical Director Camille Weins, share this sanctuary through an immersive audio-visual installation that brings the viewer into contact with the humanistic, critical musings of a legendary figure in music and technology and the site of their origins.
Simultaneously functioning as an intimate portrait of a creator and visceral study of the aliveness of objects, The Asylum welcomed the CultureHub LA audience into an interactive mix of video projection, digitally-activated physical chimes, and a soundscape made entirely from original recordings of Cope’s chime collection. Borrowed from the double-entendre nickname given to Cope’s lab by his family, the title is a loving allusion to Cope’s obsessive focus as well as the sanctity of his workspace. The Asylum installation provided a space of refuge and reflection, and allowed us to consider the phenomenal interaction of the elements animating our world and the ways we observe, honor, and shape them.
The Asylum: A Tribute to David Cope was developed in CultureHub’s Experiments in Digital Storytelling Program.