Spacecats Archives

July 19, 2024July 19, 2024

Cathenge DC -In Proposal to the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities – July 2025

Would you like to see Cathenge installed as public art in SW DC?

Support artist David Normal’s goal of installing Cathenge in “Linear Park” the park in the roundabout at the terminus of Maryland Av. SW in DC SW, Ward 6.

Cathenge DC is in proposal to the DC Commission on Art and Humanities for consideration in the “Public Art Building Communities” grant program that awards funds annually for new public art throughout Washington DC. The grant deadline is July 22nd 2025.

As a 3D printed sculptural installation, Cathenge represents the leading edge of ambition for the artistic application of large format additive printing. The sculptures are a multi-media fusion: 3D printing, LED lighting, lasers, sound, vibration and electronic interactive sensing are integral to the effect and provide visitors with a direct and palpable experience of the mystical Space Cat consciousness.

Visitors to Cathenge experience the majesty of the Catoliths through their interactive sound and lights. People moving within the circle of cat statues are detected by LiDAR beams. Soft harmonic purring tones and synchronized pulsing lights are generated which respond directly to the movement. These interactive light and sound effects evoke the power of Holofelinity.

Cathenge DC Visualization

Proposed Site of Cathenge: “Linear Park”, Maryland Ave. SW, Washington DC

The Catolith. Mystic cat statue of the Ancient Space Cat.

Cathenge at Patricia’s Green, Hayes Valley, San Francisco

Currently, “Cathenge DC” is being proposed to the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities for their “Public Art Building Communities” (PABC) grant which provides funding for public art installations that foster and strengthen community throughout Washington DC.

Background:

Cathenge was on display for 16 months, from October 2022 to March 2024, in downtown San Francisco. Sponsored by the San Francisco Arts Commission, it was displayed at the prestigious Patricia’s Green sculpture site in the fashionable Hayes Valley district of SF near the Davies Symphony Hall.

Cathenge began as a Burning Man Foundation funded “Honorarium Project” that was presented at the annual Burning Man arts festival in the Black Rock Desert of Northern Nevada.

“Cathenge DC” will be a newly revised and improved version of the recent SF installation that features great improvements in the sound and light interactivity of the installation the SF Standard called “Insanely Popular”.

Press:

“Cathenge” Glowing 9-Foot Tall Cat Sculptures Come to SF

https://sfstandard.com/2022/11/17/cathenge-comes-to-sf

https://www.timeout.com/usa/news/a-massive-cathenge-is-being-unveiled-in-san-francisco-with-glowing-feline-monoliths-112522

About the Artist:

David Normal is a painter, animator, and installation maker based in the SF Bay Area. Normal got his start making fliers for the hardcore punk scene in the Bay Area in the mid-80s. Normal began contributing to the Burning Man Festival in the mid ‘90s. Normal’s accomplishments were recognized in a solo exhibition of lightbox-murals at the British Library in
London in 2015, “Crossroads of Curiosity”. In 2022 he created “Cathenge”, the Cat Temple, for the San Francisco Arts Commission. This public art installation was displayed at Patricia’s Green Park in Hayes Valley, San Francisco from October of 2022 through March of 2024. Currently David Normal has newly established a studio in West Oakland for producing 3D printed installation art.

@postnormalism
@cathenge_cat_temple
https://davidnormal.net
http://cathenge.net
http://crossroadsofcuriosity.org

More info about Cathenge can be found on the website:

About Cathenge

Note: This proposal was begun in 2023, but couldn’t be completed in time for the 2023 grant cycle, so I am finishing it now, and hope to turn in the grant by the deadline on July 22nd 2024.

For the seriously interested:

Here is a link to the proposal draft underway. You can learn all about Cathenge DC by reading the answer to the DC CAH questions:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQRdIu3gWpKOtPPx0exW2Ae90d5NWgEmwjifdXFEkIjRX1wOIcRgYtXHhFwvdnMkXLf0X0A0RlL8Upc/pub

July 8, 2024July 8, 2024

The Space Cat Ballad

Space Cat Ballad

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

When your cat looks upward to the stars

Within her soul something special stirs.

Does not that messenger of light,

Beautiful Vega, shining bright,

Embellishing the Northern Sky,

Reflecting upon her upturned eye,

Bestow dreams unto her feline mind?

Of long lost forgotten fates entwined,

And speak of a cat civilization of the past

That ruled the interstellar spaces vast.

Did not bipedal spacecats a zenith reach?

Universal wisdom did they not teach?

The arts of pleasure they most enjoyed

And yet their love planet was destroyed.

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

If a cat could but shed a grieving tear

She’d shed as many as she sheds fur.

Here begins a cosmic tale of cats in space,

And strange beginnings for the human race.

The story of Lemewria and the Catolith

– Feline symbols of an antediluvian myth.

Here too the tale of lizards on the make

And all the devastation left in their wake.

The Disco Reptilians with all their might

Did so mercilessly the cat world smite!

Never ever say that all is completely lost:

Twenty-three light years some cats were tossed

From Vega to Earth at the Ice Age’s close

And the Cult of the Cat Priestess there arose!

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

Unexplainable monuments in every land

Mystic secrets of the ancient feline mind!

When the Cat Priestesses from outer space

Purred in harmony the huge stones into place.

The great pyramids rose up to meet the sky –

Only the sphinx and I know the reason why . . .

And Cat Priestesses of the Northern Isles

Employing all their witchy ways and wiles

To levitate alone each stone of Stonehenge –

Withstanding relentless Reptilian revenge!

All the great ruins of all forgotten ages

Are sacred books with stones instead of pages

All these temples cat people did construct

For their child, the human race, to instruct.

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

In her heart dwells sweet holofelinity

The feline form of universal divinity.

Crystalline cat cities of icy towers melted away

When those crazy lizards came to earth to play

Lemewrian civilization vanished in the flood

And yet the Cat Priestesses called not for blood.

The Disco Reptilians for all their rage and might

Could not extinguish that feline inner light:

Each act of hate was by boundless love repaid.

And so the lizard fury did falter and did fade.

Mighty Cats from outer space may no more yet be

But in the humble housecat echoes their legacy

No more clever being than a cat roams this earth

In her meditative mind she is certain of her worth.

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

When your cat does purr purr and purr

Hark ye unto her timeless wisdom pure!

June 9, 2024June 9, 2024

Kittoliths grow up to be Catoliths

Refurbished Catoliths with new bases and “KISS” (Kittolith Interactive Sound System) adapted to the Catolith

It’s only natural that cats should have kittens, and plastic cat statues should therefore have their progeny too. The Coven of Catoliths gave birth to a Litter of Kittoliths.

After 5 years of design and production I feel that the Catolith is at last nearing its potential. The newly refurbished Catoliths that were just installed at KALW with their LiDAR based interactivity, battery operation, independent control via Raspberry Pi computer, and lighter more mobile wooden base actually exceed what I imagined for this artwork 5 years ago.

Below is a table showing the progression of techniques from one iteration of Cathenge to the next.

Component	New Catolith (2024)	Kittolith System (2023-24)	Catolith System (Patricia’s Green 2022)	Catolith System (BMan 2019)
Interactivity	LiDAR (“Time of Flight”), Raspberry Pi	LiDAR (“Time of Flight”), Raspberry Pi	Passive Infrared	Capacitive Sensing by Theremin Barney
Purring	Solfeggio Tone Based	Solfeggio Tone Based	Purr Data interactive composition by Jacob Tonski	Purr Tones by No.e
3D Printing	PETG/CR-10 S-5 Self-Printed	PETG/CR-10 S-5 Self-Printed	PETG/CR-10 S-5 Self-Printed	PLA by Titanic Design
3D Modeling	“Voxel Modeling” for 2-ply model with “shiplap” joints.	“Voxel Modeling” for 2-ply model with “shiplap” joints.	“Voxel Modeling” for 2-ply model with “shiplap” joints.	No joining system!
Base	Wooden Base	Wooden Base	Concrete Base	Concrete Base
Sound	Transductive Speakers/Inverted Sub Mounted in the Base	Transductive Speakers/Inverted Sub Mounted in the Base	Transductive Speakers/Bazooka Sub	Car Audio Stuff

The Vision of Cathenge

From the beginning, the vision of Cathenge and of the Catolith Cat Statue has been exceedingly difficult to realize because it combines lighting effects and interactivity in very specific ways and is dependent on the large format 3D printing to achieve. However, each installation of Cathenge succeeded in communicating this vision in different ways, but never completely to my satisfaction, and that’s why I have continued working on the project.

The goal has been to express the concept of “Holofelinity: Universal Cat Consciousness”. Holofelinity is the magical power of the Ancient Lyran Space Cats to manifest their minds over matter and to transform themselves into any shape. This is expressed in the artwork as “Harmonic Purring” (AKA; “Purrbration of Holofelinity”), an evocation of the capacity of the Space Cats to purr their visions into material form.

Ancient Lyran Space Cat materialized as Bastet idol levitating pyramid using chromatic spectra of the Purrbration of Holofelinity.

The Kittolith

In order to reach this goal, it was instrumental to create a smaller version of the Catolith, the “Kittolith”:

Because the Kittolith presents as a single statue instead of a circle of statues (as in Cathenge) it has been necessary to condense the interactive harmonic purring system into one sculpture. This has been done using LiDAR. People interact with the LiDAR beam extending from the collar of the Kittolith and trigger different frequencies (“Solfeggio Tones”). The infographic below shows how the Kittolith works with the use of Solfeggio sound healing tones:

From Kittolith to Catolith

The “Kittolith Interactive Sound System” (KISS) was adapted for use in the Catolith. The photo gallery below documents our process of creating the New Catolith. Essential to this process was the design and construction of a new wooden base for the Catolith.

This new, lighter base not only facilitates a wider range of possibilities of exhibitions because of its much reduced weight (compared to the previous concrete bases), but also resolves acoustic issues since the wooden base acts as a ported speaker cabinet for the subwoofer installed in the base. Below is a gallery of photos of the new Catolith and its new base under construction:

June 1, 2024July 8, 2024

Opening Tues. June 11th: The Catoliths at KALW Studio Gallery!!

Group Show featuring:

Exhibition Opening and Live Broadcast Panel discussion with the artists moderated by Ben Trefny:

5 – 7 PM (doors open at 5, discussion at 6)
Tuesday, June 11th
KALW
220 Montgomery St., SF, CA 94104
Admission free – All ages

The exhibition will be up through August 1st 2024.

(Eventbrite link at bottom of page to reserve free tix)

Public broadcasting station, KALW, recently moved their radio station’s studios to the heart of San Francisco’s financial district where they reside in the ground floor lobby of the historic Mills Building located at 220 Montgomery (Montgomery and Bush). The spacious lobby provides a new and exciting arts and events space. KALW executive director, Ben Trefny, is curating a series of art exhibits in the lobby.

The KALW lobby space features large storefront windows looking out on busy Montgomery St. which are a perfect place to perch the Catoliths. Two Catoliths will be placed, one in each large window, on either side of the entrance to the radio station where they will be seen by motorists and pedestrians alike, and, of course, by visitors to the station. These Catoliths will feature their hallmark interactive purring (Purrbration of Holofelinity).

April 5, 2022April 5, 2022

Kittolith 2.0

In February we completed the “New Prototype Kittolith” and debuted it at the Space Cat Cavalcade. This 5′ tall Catolith was printed by Re3D in Houston, Texas. The sound and lights were created by Theremin Barney, Artur Pyrogovskyi, and Aaron Winette. In this video I am demonstrating the motion detection based sound/light interactivity that Barney engineered using passive infrared sensors. The cat itself is a speaker. A kind of transductive speaker is affixed to the perimeter wall of the cat statue and the entire plastic cat vibrates to produce the sound. The sounds are solfeggio tones that Artur programmed in a randomized cycle to be triggered by the voltage signal transmitted from Barney’s motion detection circuit. This is still a work in progress, but we are developing this system to be used in the ring of six Catoliths that will be installed at Patricia’s Green.