I do a lot of different activities in a lot of different mediums across several different sectors. Sometimes I wonder–how can I explain that it’s all connected?
I made this diagram for an application to a residency where I wanted to explore how we create community and how this connects to technological tools and other skills. My questions were: What skills and tools are unique to each situation? Which are shared? How can they all inform each other? What could be useful to whom, and when? What skills in one type of situation could be useful in another? How do all these situations become allies? What kinds of hybrids can we create?
I’m sharing this diagram here because I think it lays out some of my most salient underlying concerns and interests. It’s only the barest outline, but it is one window into the connective tissue that binds all the projects together…
ElectroSpectrum LivinVisible
ElectroSpectrum LIvinVisible (ESLV) is an exploration of our connection with the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS). We often take the EMS for granted, but it is an enduring mystery and looming presence, playing a crucial role in our everyday lives.
I am designing the piece as an interaction where participants will be initiated into the secrets of the EMS through invented rituals based in somatic practice, sensor-guided physical activities, and information about how networks function, who controls access, and alternatives to current modes of operating.
I am currently in a research stage, which includes performances, interviews, and small-scale experiments.
Eventually the interaction will become a mobile, modular space. The space, and accompanying screen-based engagements, created with a wide variety of collaborators, will function as hubs for examining how we harness the EMS, exposing the extractive harms and inequities that arise from the invisible infrastructures that dominate global culture. Participants will be invited to share their opinions and experiences, and contribute their own research to a database, to be compiled into multi-media reports and shared at the end of the project.
The space will have a retrofuturistic aesthetic incorporating elements from early-mid-20th century visions of the future and a rough and ready cyberpunk approach to reclaimed materials–-the World of Tomorrow meets William Gibson. It will be modular, preserving some elements as it moves from place to place, built to be free-standing or incorporated into existing structures both indoors and outdoors, and designed to adjust to the needs of those using it.
ElectroSpectrum arises from enduring questions that I have been investigating since my work on Cyborg Nation, where technology and participatory performance playfully led participants to consider our intimate relationship to technology. I want this project to be a bridge between people involved in academic and industry practice and people who, though sophisticated about the uses and weaknesses of technology, are often left out of these conversations.
ElectroSpectrum LivinVisible was in Ways of Showing Up, presented by Epicenter NYC and the Dept. of Transformation (DOT) at the Performing Garage, 33 Wooster St., NYC on July 9, 2024
ElectroSpectrum LivinVisible was part of Process/Yes/Process, curated by Edwin Torres, at the Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, NYC on June 21, 2023
Ongoing Projects
Past Projects
Clarinda Mac Low 