Installation collaboration / Brooklyn / 2026

How to Shit in Public

An audiovisual installation by Nina Fry exploring childbirth through voices, sound, light, and projection.

The installation within its exhibition room, with the enclosed booth, colored lighting, floor covering, and surrounding sculptural elements — Installation view · Jon Robertson’s project archive.

Artist: Nina Fry
Music, design & build: Jon Robertson
Presented at: The Bechdel Project · Brooklyn

A small enclosure creates a private space for a work about childbirth in New York City. Interviews, recorded material, text, and opera meet light and projection.

The Experience

Three listening stations place the present alongside the history of birth and its possible futures.

Outside the enclosure

Past

A headphone station introduces the history of birth in the United States.

Inside · Approximately 15 minutes

Present

The visitor enters, closes the door, and puts on headphones for the installation’s light, sound, and visual sequence.

Outside the enclosure

Future

A separate headphone station considers possibilities for the future of birth.

The Collaboration

Nina Fry and Jon Robertson standing together in front of the installation — Nina Fry and Jon Robertson at the installation.

Building and designing the experience

For Nina’s installation, I worked as carpenter, composer, sound designer, projection designer, and lighting designer. My contribution extended from the physical enclosure to the music and media experienced inside it.

I programmed the sound, projections, and lighting in QLab and designed a physical-button trigger so a visitor could start the full sequence without operating the computer.

Physical build: Carpentry
Music: Composition
Design: Sound · Projections · Lighting
Media programming & interaction: QLab · Physical-button trigger

One Button Starts the Sequence

The physical start button beneath handwritten instructions to take headphones and press start — The visitor’s start button, integrated into the interior.

From a physical switch to QLab

I designed the triggering mechanism around a pushbutton I bought at Home Depot. It connected to a USB input interface, which received the electrical signal and triggered the start of the QLab sequence.

That single press started the sound, lighting, and projections together. The visitor encountered a simple button; behind it was the carpentry, composition, design, and programming needed to make the installation run.

Physical button → USB input → QLab sequence