There’s a science lab in the middle of the 2022 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival — and it’s all part of a massive art installation.

As ambient sounds vibrate all around, a screen projects colorful moving images of what appears to be living cells onto a screen inside one of three tunnels that make up “Circular Dimensions x Microscape,” which was created for the festival by local artist Cristopher Cichocki.

Above the tunnels is a rainbow-shaped five-story-tall wall made out of white PVC tubes that all make up the stunning piece in the middle of the main field.

“A lot of my work is about infinite perception. Perception that we cannot completely capture. The work is never static, the work is alive,” said the Palm Springs resident and multimedia artist whose work touches on paintings, sound art, photography, sculptures as well as nature and science.

Cichocki calls his work “New Earth Art” and he has pieces in the permanent collections of institutions including the Palm Springs Art Museum, but this will be his first time displaying his art at Coachella.

And for his Coachella debut he constructed a pavilion made out of 25,000 feet of PVC tubes that create three main tunnel-like spaces under a massive wall.

“It’s pretty stunning, and relaxing at the same time. It’s a cool spot to chill,” said San Diego resident Andrea Rodriguez, as sat inside the middle tunnel leaning against a wall on day one of the festival.

Inside the main tunnel is the pavilion’s “nucleus” where artists are creating video images using digital microscopic manipulation of water, salt, barnacles and algae taken from the nearby Salton Sea.

“It’s live chemistry being projected into the central tunnel,” the artist said.

The installation isn’t just for the eyes but also for the ears since recordings that sound like natural noises mixed in with computer generated sounds that resonate through the tunnels.

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As the day progresses the sounds become more intense, culminating in an audio-visual performance by Cichocki called “Circular Dimensions.”

“I’ll be activating a soundscape in the daytime that is using a lot of found sound from the desert and then at nighttime when the sun sets I’m going to be going into a more rhythmic, bass driven sound set that will be activated with this live microscopic laboratory,” he said.

“It’s going to be different all of the time. You’ll come in at different points of the day and you’ll have a totally different experience because the audio is shifting, the microscopic laboratory is shifting and then at night time there’s going to be video projection onto the pavilion as well,” Cichocki said.

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