A Stroll Through the NETGarden
With CAMP ENSEMBLE Featured Artist, Scarlett Kim
We invite our ensemble community into a participatory art-making experience centered around the creation and cultivation of our evolving NETGarden - a space for imagination, reflection, and collective storytelling.
Preliminary sketch of interactive installation for CAMP ENSEMBLE in Los Angeles
Over the course of the Los Angeles Regional Gathering, participants will co-create a living deck of cards that captures the voices and wisdom of the NET community that speaks to NET’s ensemble creation ethos and the transformative power of collaborative practice.
At the heart of the gathering is an interactive art station where participants engage with creativity and community through a simple but powerful ritual:
🌸 1. Making a Flower Card
Step up to the card-making station and choose from five templates—QUESTION, PROVOCATION, OFFERING, REMEMBRANCE, or VISION—each printed on vibrant colored paper. Give your card a title, draw a flower, and write a sentence or two of personal or collective wisdom.
You'll be guided by a “box of creativity,” full of craft supplies and visual references of indigenous Southern California flora, to inspire your contribution. Make as many Flower Cards as you like—this is your opportunity to speak into the collective bloom.
🌿 2. Planting a Flower Card
Once your card is complete, you’re invited to ceremonially “plant” it in the NETGarden—a dynamic net installation shaped like a geodesic dome. Attach your card to the net using color-coded twine, symbolically weaving your voice into the fabric of our community.
🕸️ 3. The NETGarden Installation
More than just a structure, the NETGarden is a living archive. You're encouraged to bring a material from home—old textiles, palm fronds, ribbons, anything flexible and meaningful—to weave into the net. These fragments form a tapestry of our interconnected stories and environmental awareness.
💻 4. Growing the Digital Garden
Each Flower Card is scanned and added to a Digital Garden, allowing both in-person and virtual participants to witness the blossoming archive. The digital and physical gardens grow in tandem, telling a story of collective presence and purpose.
🔔 5. Closing Ceremony
On the final day, we will gather around the NETGarden for a closing ritual. One by one, participants will step forward to read a Flower Card aloud. Then, in a symbolic act of exchange, each participant is invited to take home a card that speaks to them.
🚐 6. A Traveling Garden
After CAMP ENSEMBLE, the NETGarden will continue its journey, traveling to future NET gatherings. This growing artifact will serve as a testament to the creativity, memory, and forward-thinking of our ensemble community.
🃏 7. Toward a Full Flower Card Deck
The contributions from this convening will become the seeds of a future Flower Card Deck—a printed and published artifact that celebrates ensemble creation and collective wisdom. Your participation helps shape the deck’s voice and vision.
ABOUT SCARLETT KIM
Scarlett Kim is a creative producer, director and artist innovating the intersection of live performance and immersive technology. A polymath, Scarlett creates participatory experiences that reimagine liveness, embodiment, and agency—drawing upon theatre, XR, game and ritual. An international arts leader, Scarlett champions artists across sectors and disciplines, powered by subversive artistic vision and entrepreneurial strategy.
Currently: Scarlett is Co-Founder/Executive Creative Producer of Center for Unclassifiable Technologies & Experiences (C.U.T.E.); Interdisciplinary Fellow at Royal Shakespeare Company; Visiting Artist at Stanford Arts; and Co-Founder of Independent XR Distribution Coalition in partnership with MIT Open Doc Lab.
Recently: Scarlett co-founded/produced Worlds in Play (ASU MIX Center); produced the 10th anniversary edition of Live Arts Exchange [LAX] Festival (Los Angeles Performance Practice) with partners including REDCAT, MOCA, and LA Dance Project; collaborated with Chloé Zhao and Book of Shadows; and participated in the 2024 Disney Live Entertainment: Creative Intensive.
Previously, as Director of Innovation & Strategy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Scarlett led the transmedia department of the largest repertory theater in the US. Scarlett co-founded and served as Artistic Director of The Mortuary, performance laboratory for unclassifiable experiments. At CultureHub, global art and technology community founded by La MaMa and SeoulArts, Scarlett oversaw artistic programming of the LA studio.
Other highlights of Scarlett’s 10+ year journey as an artist and arts leader include collaborations with REDCAT, East West Players, Prague Quadrennial, Z Space, Korea Foundation, Creative Australia, Chilean National Council of Culture & Arts, Thomas Mann House/Goethe-Institut, and BOLD Theater Women’s Leadership Circle.
Scarlett’s innovation leadership has been featured at cross-industry platforms including The Immersive Immersive (Keynote Speaker, 2023), LDI (Co-host, XLIVE), SXSW, SIGGRAPH, AWE, USITT, The Immersive Experience Institute.
MFA, Directing, CalArts. BA, Theatre & Performance Studies and Visual Arts, University of Chicago.
This installation was created in collaboration with C.U.T.E. Director of Creative Technology, Anthony Storniolo.