Since August 2024 much of my studio research has been based at Smith College’s Ada and Archibald Macleish Field Station, a 250-acre area of forest and pasture land where I’m currently working as a Visiting Artist. Every week I visit two sites there to record the changes in soundscape as part of an informal acoustic ecology study. As a way of getting to know both the human and non-human activity at Macleish, I have also been scheduling walks with researchers, staff, students, and neighbors who know the area well, and they are introducing me to the sounds and species they know and notice. There is so much more going on here than meets the eye. Over the coming year or so you’ll get glimpses of new work in a variety of media inviting human visitors to listen, sniff the air, and sink our fingers into deep moss and snowdrift.
Magic Hour in Singapore
Lets take a walk together: Back in 2020, Andrew Yang and I were the inaugural Artists-in-Residence at Yale-NUS College in Singapore when COVID hit. Museums and studio spaces were closed indefinitely, and like many we found refuge in daily walks. It was not what anyone had planned for - but offered a rare opportunity to experience the city free of tree trimmers and cars, instead repopulated with the persistence of non-human life. We mixed recordings of that traffic-free tropical soundscape with narration to create five multisensory audio outings reflecting on interspecies interconnectedness, climate breakdown, and presence.
These sonic meditations were just re-released as QR-coded postcards for the exhibition "Magic Hour" and the book "Magic: Art Practices at Yale-NUS College." It's a bittersweet treat, commemorating the vibrant creative community of a great institution that will sadly close at the end of this semester.
Revisiting them now from the snowy fields of Massachussets is a surreal portal to another time and place. Transform your own wintry walk at https://soundcloud.com/.../listening-through-the-landscape
Studies for Simultaneous Listening at Roman Susan, Chicago
If you’re in Chicago, join me at dusk on July 27th for Studies for Simultaneous Listening at Roman Susan Gallery, 1224 W Loyola Ave in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood.
Outdoor Projections
Tuesday, July 27 // 8:30-10 PM
Studies for Simultaneous Listening blends the existing soundscape of Roman Susan’s neighborhood with projected video and field recordings imagining the area's ecological past, present, and possible future. These recordings will be part of an audio walking tour guided by non-human inhabitants, currently under development for the nearby West Ridge Nature Park as part of the upcoming Navigations series. Field recordings and projections are activated around dusk tonight and tomorrow, to be experienced directly in the outdoors.