Nightlife

Cosmo’s P3Studio hosts an experimental zen nightlife experience

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Guiding light: Lia Chavez’s Octave offers a meditative nightlife experience.
Deanna Rilling

Step into the darkness as a low hum resonates and lasers dance on the walls of Las Vegas’ smallest and most-exclusive nightlife experience, limited to only 10 attendees at a time. And the DJ isn’t some superstar—it’s you, using only your mind to control the music and visuals.

On January 7, the P3Studio art space at the Cosmopolitan debuted this unique pop-up nightclub, a blend of performance art, neuroscience and hacked technological innovation called The Octave of Visible Light: A Meditation Nightclub. Artist-in-residence Lia Chavez, along with creative technology company rehabstudio, takes curious onlookers through an exploration of consciousness as art material.

The experience features “the world’s first technological system that brings together three concurrent oscillations: neurobiological, sonic and light,” Chavez says. “As a participant in this meditation nightclub, you wear this headset and it transmits your brainwave activity to an audiovisual system. That audiovisual system broadcasts both the color and sonic equivalent of the brainwave that you’re experiencing in real time.”

When the system engages, the DJ, or participant, sees a red circle and then moves up the spectrum of visible light, starting at the lower end of concentration. The higher the concentration, the closer to the color violet. A high state of concentration creates a rainbow effect.

Unlike in Strip megaclubs, you’ll never hear the same set twice here. Chavez explains the experience is tuned in at 432 HZ, a frequency reported to be reparative for some people. Here, it produces a realigning effect on your body. Think of it as the ultimate chillout room.

“This was really conceived as a healing experience—almost a disruptive experience in Las Vegas,” says Chavez, adding that her experiential exhibit is also “winking at the culture here, [like] a spiritual striptease.”

The Octave of Visible Light Through February 8; Wednesday-Sunday, 6 p.m.-midnight; artist performances Saturday, 9 p.m., free. Cosmopolitan's P3Studio, 702-698-7000.

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