Top image: installation view of a locked room with audio playing inside, Tamarus Studio, Las Vegas, NV. Bottom: Self-Portrait in XO Karaoke, Las Vegas. Below is the recording of the entire set; all songs regarding being lonely/alone, performed in seclusion.
As a new resident to Las Vegas, I am seeing multiple artificial environments and thinking about the work that it takes both the creator and those experiencing those environments to make such places possible. Tremendous amounts of innovation, research, and resources go into making places of fantasy and visitors are asked to do their part and not look behind the curtain. Really, it's better for everyone.
On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony. ……….. "She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked one of the female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it! Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?"
"It were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, "if we stripped Madam Hester's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter, which she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel, to make a fitter one!"