What does it mean for a space to remember? And how might that memory be sensed rather than simply observed?
This presentation explores how film and sound engage the layered memory of place, not as a fixed historical record, but as a perceptual experience. Drawing from work across filmmaking, music, and visual direction, it examines how architecture, atmosphere, and sonic presence shape the way time is felt within a space. Projects include a documentary centered on St. James Church (Los Angeles, est. 1920), alongside additional works that explore how environments carry and transform lived experience.
Across these works, sound operates not as accompaniment, but as a force that alters attention, emotion, and spatial awareness. The presence of choral sound serves as one example of how resonance can bridge past and present within a single environment.
Through this creative practice, Justin Baker-Rojas developed the Four Pillars of Human Perception—Presence, Resonance, Meaning, and Movement—as a framework for understanding how individuals engage with image, sound, and space. These pillars emerged through interdisciplinary work and reflect how perception unfolds through the interaction of external stimulus and internal experience.
By sensing time through space, this session invites a shift from interpretation alone toward a more embodied encounter with the environments we inhabit and the memories they continue to hold.
