Tremors 2023 speakers, amplifier, monitors, sand, porcelain, Python/ObsPy code, Max patcher, and cables
Buried beneath one ton of sand, six speakers amplify a live seismic activity as sound. Using an open-source ObsPy code and a Max patcher, the work synthesizes local seismic data into a sound wave that spatially varies between the six speakers. Viewers are invited to traverse the mound to feel the low grumbling vibrations of magnified Earth movements. Small porcelain rocks are mixed into the locally sourced sand. Installed with the work is a two-channel video. As a chance-operation poem, words borrowed from geology texts loop on each monitor at differing speeds to create an endless cycle of combinations. The intention is to bridge one’s understanding of how their presence on this moving-shaking planet is in flux—that the ground we think is static shifts beneath our feet.
Special thanks to:
Ben Gwin and Owen Wang - coding and software development
Brett Bornhoft - electrical engineering and coding
Amanda Semler & Curtis Boden - geological data sourcing and consulting
Joshua Clark - audio equipment advising
Kansas State University United States National Seismic Network
Cedar Bluff United States National Seismic Network
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By a Thread 2023 digital print on voile fabric, wood, 3D printed hardware
By a Thread is a celebration of the Endangered Species Act, the most effective environmental legislation for the past 50 years. Though few animals have been delisted, most species avoided extinction because of the legal protection. This collection of drawn plants and animals depicts every species ever federally listed as endangered under the ESA that resides or resided within a 30-mile radius of my studio on the unceded territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.
Viewers are invited to gently sift through and touch the banners. The accompanying guide can assist in identifying species throughout the installation. The photographs referenced for the illustrations are sourced from the Creative Commons and often taken by citizen scientists. This guide credits the source image photographers with gratitude. The ESA has a history of embracing citizen science by allowing anyone to petition to list a species to the Fish and Wildlife Service. The illustrations were returned to the Creative Commons to increase accessibility and aid further study.
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Gestrata 2021, 8:05, video
Gestrata overlays my experience with the physical changes in my body during pregnancy and slow changes that the earth experiences through geological processes. This type of imagining, whether applied to the inner and outer of landscapes or our own bodies, is crucial in imagining the flux of the warming planet. It is about the unknown of the other side and the desire to explore through touch. (i.e. we can only guess at what is inside the earth by measuring the pulses of earthquakes.) In avoidance of gendered and stigma-filled expectations of pregnancy, I directed my questions toward animacy--what it means to be a changing body living on a changing and shifting planet. Through written and poetic captions I propose that infants aren’t purely innocent blank slates, but that they perhaps hold memory of what it is like to be in constant motion. Capitalistic Western ideals want to mask the world as unbreakable and unmoving. Mechanisms are used to measure-mark-take both the body and planet, but I am drawn to the unmeasurable. Changing and shifting forms delude bounds. Through my own body’s relationship to the geological make-up of the earth, I try to grasp the sounds and feelings of our current moment of unraveling stability.
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Burnishings 2018-Ongoing charcoal on paper, 168 count 11” x 14” drawings
Burnishings is a series of drawings made with forest fire-burned bark as charcoal. The process involves visiting public lands scarred by fire and collecting small bits of charcoal. As I travel to any public land thereafter, I identify native species of trees and rub the found charcoal across the paper placed up against the tree’s bark. The work is about reciprocity and touch in spaces otherwise driven by narratives of preservation and “leave no trace”. Burnishing describes the process of rubbing and care through contact. Although the series of drawings is ongoing, this current installation includes 168 11”x14” drawings from the collection. The arrangement is based on a geographical mapping of the trees from West to East.
