Creative Pulse: A case study by New Nostalgia

Creative Pulse schematic, symmetrical: a black column at the head of a mirrored runway in perspective, four laser beams fanning up from behind it, their four reflections on the runway below

Creative Pulse was an immersive light-art installation that debuted at Clay’s 2025 Sculpt Conference at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. It featured a 16-foot mirrored catwalk with a large upright backdrop of black acrylic. Choreographed laser light, synced to audio, was projected over the catwalk. The audiovisual sequence resembled the expansion and contraction of a deep breath—a pulse of sound and light.

Looking down the mirrored catwalk to the black acrylic column, blue-violet laser points scattered across the ceiling and doubled in the mirror, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum — Creative Pulse Installation View, San Francisco, CA, 2025

A man seen from behind with his arms held out, standing on the mirrored catwalk under two white laser beams that run the length of the ceiling — Akarsh Facing Creative Pulse, San Francisco, CA, 2025

A visitor in white on the mirrored catwalk, seen in its reflection from below, with white laser lines on the ceiling and the aluminum edges glowing blue — Mirrored Catwalk Reflection, Glass, Aluminum Edge

Close-up of the black acrylic column’s corner in blue light, a single laser line crossing the ceiling above it — Black Plastic Acrylic Close-Up

A black field with white rays radiating from a dark point at its centre — Black Velvet Void
Graphic Barbara Ann Brennan

1. The Black Velvet Void

We know creativity exists, but what does it look like? How can we visualize someone in a flow state? During the creative process, we can feel connected to a higher energetic source—but how would we picture it?

While spiritual healing and energy training still struggle for public acceptance, they provide a useful framework for understanding the human energy consciousness system.

Every creative act begins in the dark. Barbara Brennan, healer and author of Core Light Healing, calls that darkness the “Black Velvet Void”: an undifferentiated, unmanifested life force at the core of every person. This void resembles the zero-point field of quantum mechanics, the lowest possible energy state of a quantum field. For Brennan, the void is the infinite, foundational source of all manifestation.¹

Beside it sits what she calls the core star, an individuated divine point of pure light. Creation, in her telling, is the movement between them: a pulse from void into reality and back, intention reaching into the unformed and returning with something new.

Relying on energy training, we can visualize the creative process as a constant, pulsing, back and forth between the dark unmanifested and pure light.

2. Thoughtless Presence

Sometimes you stumble upon something unexpected—our installation was tucked behind the bathrooms of the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s main floor. For those who found it, we offered a psychedelic respite. A place to find awe, recharge, and channel creative energy.

The installation transformed a pitch-black room, pulsing laser light throughout. Attendees would line up, get briefed on the experience, walk out onto a mirrored catwalk that reflected the ceiling back down at them. Slowly, a sequence of light and sub-bass pulses unfolded.

Based on Brennan’s research, we modeled the sequence on four phases of the creative process: stasis, expansion, contraction, and stasis. Intense pulses followed by moments of peace.

The piece was designed as a moment of direct experience to contrast the active, always-on mentality of conferences. Every element reinforced thoughtless presence: laser light, booming sub-bass, and moments of darkness.

As Eckhart Tolle said, creativity arises out of the state of thoughtless presence in which you are much more awake than when you are engrossed in thinking.²

For a moment, we created a bridge from our physical realities to something more metaphysical. While short-lived and temporary, our hope is that these small slivers of perspective can be referenced back and applied in the future to live a more creative and joyful life.

3. Life Pulses

The creative pulse of life is not just one pulse.

It is infinite pulses of infinite phases, frequencies, and sizes, all stemming from the core essence.

It arises not only out of the core star but out of every cell of your body, out of every part of every cell—the DNA, the elements, the atoms.

Life expands, creates, goes into stasis, reflects, contracts, distills the knowledge, and brings conscious awareness to the center of your being.

There are many phases in this creative wave of life. Each individual pulsates through many phases of expansion and contraction across different aspects of life. Some long, others short.

Some fast, others slow.

All life pulses are universal.

Each life pulse permeates everything.

Your every action, your every phrase, reaches the great expanse of the universe. All are synchronized in the great symphony of life.

Barbara Ann Brennan, Core Light Healing (2017)

Technical Overview

This section outlines the fabrication, lighting, sound, and control systems used to build Creative Pulse, New Nostalgia’s activation for Clay’s Sculpt 2025 conference, produced with Trademark. The installation paired a mirrored floor runway with an 8-foot black column, with a laser hidden behind the column casting points of light onto the ceiling above. A single timeline, started by participants with a clicker, ran the full sequence.

1. Fabrication

The piece was built from four 2’ × 8’ MDF boards. These formed the base of a 2’-wide runway on the floor.

The runway was surfaced with two glass mirrors and two acrylic mirrors laid end to end, and finished with aluminum edging along both sides. The column was faced in opaque black acrylic, giving it a flat, light-absorbing surface that read as a void at the end of the reflective path.

Standing at the head of the runway, participants looked down a strip of mirror that held the ceiling, the column, and the light above. The room appeared to open both upward and downward at once.

2. Lighting

A Kvant 20W laser was mounted on a stand behind the black acrylic column, concealed from the viewer and aimed up toward the ceiling. With no fog or haze in the room, the beams themselves stayed invisible. Only their endpoints appeared, as sharp points of white, violet, and pink light scattered across the ceiling.

The mirrored runway caught those points and doubled them below, so the field of light seemed to exist above and beneath the participant at the same time. The laser was the only active light source in the installation. The column, runway, and room were lit entirely by its output and the spill reflecting off the mirrors and aluminum edges.

3. Sound

Sound was delivered through a QSC full-range speaker stack positioned out of sight from the runway. The soundtrack was built to move in step with the laser, carrying the sequence’s shifts in intensity through the room.

4. Control & Sequence

The Creative Pulse sequence ran from a single timeline in Pangolin Beyond. A handheld clicker started the timeline, so participants triggered the experience themselves rather than walking into a looping show. Each press played the sequence once from the beginning, giving every visitor or group the same complete arc of light and sound before the room settled back into stillness.

5. Gear Summary

Fabrication4× MDF board (2’ × 8’)2× glass mirror2× acrylic mirror4× aluminum edge1× opaque black acrylic panel

Lighting1× Kvant 20W laser1× Stand

Sound1× QSC full-range speaker stack

Control / SoftwarePangolin Beyond1× clicker