Synchronous Forest 3, an installation.
Single Channel Video Projection, Four Channel Sound, Spiral Scrim.
The piece takes the primary form of a large spiral - perhaps reminiscent of a tree trunk - composed of one part diaphanous fabric, one part projected video. Projected onto this spiral are slow and gently crossfading images, drifting from a rotating tree-trunk bark-scape to a daydream of gold-green flowering branches wafting in breeze. A partly physical partly electronic space for contemplation.
In the acoustic space of the gallery a quadraphonic soundscape is heard. Part of the time it is a composition entitled "Bees Without Bees" in which urban beehive recordings are filtered so as to remove the most bee-like aspects, until the very end when the bees return in an instant of intensity. The other part of the time, it is a soundscape of distant crickets and electrical wires in mist, punctuated by the violent and banal passing of a minivan speeding through the landscape.
Inside the spiral scrim, visitors are invited to sit on a small bench and listen to small, naked speakers dangling from wires. The sounds here are edited and "electronified" manipulations of urban wildlife sounds. If you knew what you were hearing, you would hear frogs from 24th and Capp streets, owls from Bernal Hill, and crickets from the Lower Haight among other things.
At the center of the spiral, a beautiful "trunk" is formed of discarded etched panels, copper on white fiberglass.
A wicker bench is positioned outside the spiral, a point of view which regards the whole, as one might sit and regard a garden. This is a wonderful vantage to experience the dimensional effect of video passing through the layers of curved fabric scrim.
In making it, I was thinking about the relationship to and interface between humans and nature. As beings who regard ourselves as beings, we can see ourselves as part of nature or as outside of it. This duality is presented here in a form (the spiral) which has an inside and an outside, with no clearly defined crossing point.
work details:
-Single-Channel video projection.
-Four audio channels derived from field recordings of urban wildlife in San Francisco's Mission District and environs.
-Materials: Fabric, Video, Sound, Benches, Speakers, Space, Circuit Boards. 18' x 25' and 11' tall.
-Thanks to Jana Blankenship, Aaron Ximm, and CCA (among others!)
This video is a four-minute walk through the gallery space.
