By admin 
It turns out that Levi Smith, audiovisual specialist at the Denver Art Museum, is a Grace Jones.
Read more Residents to Nederland leaders: End the deal to buy Eldora ski area immediately
“That feels right,” Smith said, after taking the museum’s “Which Diva Are You?” quiz, part of the ongoing DIVA exhibition. “That makes me happy.”
DIVA, which debuted at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2023, is in the middle of a five-stop world tour, landing in Denver until Jan. 31, before taking off to Tokyo for its final act.
It’s an illuminating survey of styles and stage presence, opening with the women of 19th century opera — the first to be called “divas” in print — and moving through centuries of performers right on through Cher, Dolly Parton, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. The show is stuffed with more than 200 objects, including 50 custom outfits, from more than 100 divas. Despite the silks, sequins and feathers galore, the whole thing would have felt unfinished without the diva’s greatest asset: her voice.
For this, the museum turned to Tonwelt, a Berlin-based audio company specializing in sound installations and museum guides.
Tonwelt’s custom headsets hang in neat rows at the entrance to the exhibition. Each pair has an imperceptible trigger installed over the left ear, which will be detected by more than 70 infrared sensors Smith set up throughout the exhibition.
Some sensors have a stronger radius than others: Maria Callas, Whitney Houston, Cher.
“I’ve heard every artist so many times now. I still have ‘do you believe in life after love?’ stuck in my head,” Smith said, singing the chorus to Cher’s “Believe.” “I actually sang it at karaoke last weekend.”
Of all the divas, Cher’s section gave Smith the most trouble. Her voice drowned out the others. “It’s like we brought this spirit in and then had to contain it,” he said. “I swear to God you would walk through the door and Cher would hit you. Nothing else you walked up to would work.” Not Madonna, Selena, Lady Gaga or Patti Smith, who she shares floor space with.
Levi Smith finally got Cher’s room to work exactly one day before the show opened, he said. The same day that all 500 Tonwelt headphones arrived, too. “So, that was gnarly,” Smith laughed.
The divine diva
The moment the doors to the exhibition open, the voice of Callas, the American-Greek opera singer, floods through the headphones. It’s her 1954 rendition of “Casta Diva,” written by Vincenzo Bellini for his 1831 opera “Norma.”
“Norma” was created right as opera was spreading across Europe, and marked a shift toward more powerful lead roles for the female soprano. These roles were written “to accommodate the growing art, talent and ambition of the diva,” curator Kate Bailey wrote in an essay for the exhibition catalogue.
Back then, the word was still rooted in the Italian word diva, used to describe goddesses or deities, and applied to this group of exceptional singers to describe their talents as a divine gift.
The suggestion was a double-edged sword, a flattering comparison that stripped the performers of the work they put into mastering the craft.
Read more What to do in Colorado this week: A blow-up art installation in downtown Denver
“I am not an angel and do not pretend to be. That is not one of my roles. But I am not a devil, either,” Callas, who was one of the first divas to have her personal life scrutinized as closely as her professional one, is often quoted as having said. “I am a woman and a serious artist.”
Callas’ quote cuts straight to the contradictions of divadom that the exhibition attempts to trace through the years. It is a role both worshipped and criticized, adored by the public and devastatingly isolated. To achieve the status often means an adherence to perfection interpreted as difficult — as late as 2015 the Oxford English Dictionary defined a diva as “a person, typically a woman, who is self-important, temperamental, and extremely demanding.”
Staying in sync
While the first half of the exhibition sets the stage for the divas of today — moving from the opera halls through the golden age of Hollywood into the 1960s — the second half is a sprawling look at all the ways that stars have reclaimed and reinvented the word.
Of course there are divas who don’t get representation, and others whose diva status is questionable at best. Bailey, the curator, is well aware of that. As she told a crowd on opening day, her goal was not to tell every single diva’s story, it was to tell a story about the diva. The women (and a few men) exhibited were plucked from pop culture because they exemplified part of that narrative.
For those who are still dissatisfied with the exclusion of their favorite diva, there is a wall full of sticky notes near the exhibition exit, where they can write in their choices. Miss Piggy appears on the wall more than a few times.
Smith’s favorite diva is Prince, he said, whose custom performance shoes with a reinforced heel to support his “energetic dance moves,” according to the museum text, are displayed next to album covers and photos of a Prince tribute by Lil Nas X.
One of Smith’s favorite spots in the show is the transition to Taylor Swift’s display, a thick doorway that opens onto a mannequin in Swift’s custom Gucci sequined dress, custom Versace bodysuit, a stack of friendship bracelets, and the music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” projected above the center-of-the-room display.
“It’s this really beautiful moment where you walk through a tunnel, and you catch the audio somewhat unexpectedly,” Smith said. The star’s voices — Swift and, in a similar setup, Icelandic musician Björk — emerge from the headphones at the same time the visual spectacle comes into view. “I was like, I’m so clever,” Smith said.
The video elements proved the hardest to program for the headphones, Smith said. Along with Swift’s “Ophelia” video, there are also compilations of Rihanna, Janet Jackson, Beyoncé, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Mae West and Carmen Miranda, among others, dotted throughout the show.
The headphones have all of the songs preloaded directly into the sets, so when a visitor walks by a sensor, that track starts playing from its start. But with the videos, the audio track had to be synced to whatever part of the video that the audience happened to walk in on. To accomplish that, Smith sent the video tracks to Tonwelt in Germany, which programmed the videos with what Smith called a time stamp, then the audio was lined up to match that time stamp. If you listen to the audio straight from the videos, it sounds like dial-up internet, Smith said, then mimicked the sound of dial-up internet.
Typically, Smith’s work fades into the background of the museum’s exhibitions. But with DIVA, the headphones are the star of the show. Which meant a lot of excitement leading up to set up, and a lot of dread wondering if he could pull it off.
“It’s always exciting to do something really challenging, because then you get to prove yourself, try new things, and elevate your craft,” Smith said. “Other exhibitions aren’t so tech heavy, and they’re always exciting to do. But it’s nice to be featured.”
Read more Where Gabe Evans, Manny Rutinel stand on the key issues in the 8th Congressional District