MEMT

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MAGIC EARTH MOTHER TONGUE

Scope: MEMT is a collaborative, multilingual public sound-art-music-video project based on research around BIO-CULTURAL Diversity in the Salish Sea Basin. Bio-cultural diversity refers to the way..

 “human communities have developed thousands of different cultures and languages, distinctive ways of seeing, knowing, doing and speaking that have been shaped by the interactions between people and the natural world.” Maffi, L. Talking diversity. World Conservation: The magazine of the World Conservation Union, January 2008: 13-14.

Biodiversity has strong links to cultural and linguistic diversity in that areas of particular linguistic diversity tend to be more biodiverse than the ecology of a monoculture. Areas with more traditional indigenous and locally based communities are typically more diverse linguistically which means more traditional environmental knowledge exists which are reflected in greater care taken towards the maintenance of local ecosystems. Where outliers are in power, where less localized power is at play in regards to environmental conditions and resources, Bio-cultural diversity is in peril.

PROJECT GOALS

If cultural and linguistic diversity safeguard biodiversity we must build our communication skills, learn old and new languages to understand and activate our collective bio-cultural diversity.

We intend to make intermedia public art about all the languages that are spoken around us, in the open and in secret, lost and recovered, native and nonnative, to begin to understand and honor the past, present and potential biodiversity of our community. These video shorts will be collected and screened for the Bellingham community, projected on the side of the Herald Building and online and on the campus of Western Washington University in Fall 2021.

Magic Earth Mother Tongue uses language as a means for equitable cultural exchange. As we learn and teach, embrace not knowing and work towards understanding, language exists as a neutral and nonthreatening tool for communication. 

To honor the Earth, the source of our words, our creative production will take as subject the natural phenomena and ecosystems native to the Salish Sea Basin. As we experience the ecology that inspires our speech, recognize the value of diversity across culture and nature, we will recover what ties us together and to the environment.

Now: Museum of Museums outdoor sound art show

I’m happy to be part of a new sound art installation in Seattle, WA! It’s at the Museum of Museums, a new art space with a fascinating backstory. It’s wrestling with the city of Seattle in regards to zoning according to the Seattle Times. Yet it continues to support innovative programming like the sound installation. I sent this work below which I originally wrote and produced in 2015! But if felt like it fit the site and the way people would engage with it, in passing. Something short, compact and playful. But also strange and speculative. It’s always been a favorite. Here it is with the accompanying video:

OPEN CALL FOR SOUND ART! When you can’t invite people inside, bring the art outside. UMMAGUMMA is the new sound art...

Posted by Museum of Museums on Monday, December 7, 2020

A few things we made...

This fall I collaborated with students at Western Washington University to produce a 20 minute soundscape based on regional habitat zones. My primary function was as motivator, director, producer and fabricator. I learned how to build speakers from parts and also designed and constructed waterproof housing for the system… almost waterproof! It’s been a long process and we are still ironing out the kinks but the project was very well received and we are discussing how to make the new sound art “gallery” in the alley a permanent site! So much hard work went into it. Here is a little video to give a taste of the experience on opening day, November 19th, 2020. Deep gratitude to Professor Cynthia Camlin, her students in Art&Ecology, Margot Meyers and MindPort Exhibits and the Downtown Bellingham Partnership!

Collaboration with art students from Western Washington University. Field recordings by student artists based on regional habitat zones. Speaker system design and build, electric guitar by Sasha Petrenko

The second half of the video shows progress towards creating an interactive sound sculpture I’ve been developing for wow some time now. I’m using a Touch Board to trigger sound through proximity. It’s a wonderful tool using Arduino coding language. I had students use the same board this fall and they made some amazing work. Looking forward to teaching this class again when times are closer to how they once were. The sudden closures and shut downs, the pressure of the pandemic, almost subterranean at times, then suddenly piercing drains the energy, heart and spirit. But we made this thing and more>>>

Student work sample from fall 2020 Intermedia Public Art. Mia Cullen, Haley Mounes, Henry Watts.

Another collaboration with students and colleagues resulted in a video projection in downtown Bellingham. My students produced layered videos, working with students and colleagues in the dance department. Thank you to Senior Dance Instructor Susan Haines and her students for being so graceful, flexible and generous! The results were compiled into a 45 minute video that streamed outside in early December.

With all the lockdowns I also managed to go through some old footage from the past years to make a decent compilation of ForestTime: Fire. I’m happier with this than previous attempts at squeezing down a year long effort into 5 minutes so here it is:

All the layers speak to the process that took me to so many places, physically, spiritually. The way time folds over, or seems to happen all at once and even how pieces of the past slip away to return fully fleshed when one least expects. Creatively this is the last most developed work I’ve mustered. While some say this past year was generative, for me I felt like a deer in the headlights. Frozen. So a lot of my creative energy was poured into my teaching, cooking, yoga, running, playing music and organizing ways to gather safely with loved ones. I’m just beginning to feel something fresh… ForestTime: Water is drifting back into my mind. Now that I cut it down to 7 minutes from 20! It’s just a restart but it feels more authentic. And I am beginning to understand what water means here, in Bellingham, in the Pacific North West. One feels like your swimming in it this time of year. It’s so dark, and wet, and beautiful. You can get used to it.

Rare Acoustic Set and Lessons

Doesn’t even capture the ferny forest splendor or my achey legs. I’ll be back!

Doesn’t even capture the ferny forest splendor or my achey legs. I’ll be back!

The forest schooled me again yesterday. Trying to find my way through new territory and the mountain proved to be too much for my skinny legs. And I thought I was so strong. Fit! No. The terrain climbed and climbed and my frustration grew with each turn. How much higher? I was impatient. I wanted to reach the top. To satisfy the ego. To conquer the day! But I finally had to turn around. My legs were cement. Aching to the bone. I could have kept going but I turned off on a trail and started back down the mountain. And it was beautiful. It’s true, this place I now call home is a MTB mecca. But it’s harder than I thought! Surprises are good. To keep learning new things we are reminded that there is so much we do not know. We are humbled.

Later I learned to count to 15 in binary! Actually no I didn’t. But I made this binary counter. I am not too clear on binary. How it works. I get the concept, that’s how computers count and communicate but I can’t count like them. The flashy lights and colorful wires are enough for me. Continuing my journey to produce that forest theremin I’ve been pining (ha pun intended!) over for a year now. Baby steps. But making progress.

Reboot: Transmission from a Future Forest

Last Friday morning I had a really productive meeting with Faculty from Computer Science, Industrial Design as well as students from each department to reconnect on a collaboration we just started when everything closed down. The meeting was fruitful and we agreed to work together over the summer and into the fall as things begin to lift and until then online. I have several students in my classes right now already interested in working with Arduino and robotics so I am not only doing this for me. All the research can be reapplied as usual to my classroom.

I am beginning to understand that coding is a lot like a language in that it one must know the words, their meanings before one can write a useful, meaningful sentence. It’s not always logical or intuitive but more experience and time-based. A kind of learning that is more about building understanding. But I like it. It is a bit more fun than I imagined. This code was super simple and bare-minimal but I made up most of it based on a lesson and I got it right! So it’s not impossible.


In other news I got my plans squared up to travel as soon as school ends in June. Booked a camp site in the Deschutes National Forest and then a couple nights in Bend, one of my favorite MTB spots. A few days of fun in the high desert to let go of all that we thought we lost since March 14th. It’s not over. But we are getting some time off for good behavior. I think I am going to miss this stay-at-home life. Still have summer, and Fall is yet clear whether we’ll be back to F2F classes. One never really knows. But for a little bit of time, I can look forward to this escape.


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Screen|Scream Therapy continues through 5/29/2020

Workshopped a new old work last night for scream therapy. Coming together but still missing. Last week’s screen therapy was a circus! This week it was more stripped down. Still working on dialing in the sound. Built a pedal board in 10 minutes with some wood scraps. Pretty decent. But found some serious feedback occurs when I use both my wireless mic and bass receiver. Need to do some research to figure that out.

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Feel like I’ve been riding the surface, mentally, through the past few weeks. It’s hard to take it all in. Put words to this epic time. I know I need to do this, write it down. But it’s more than I can describe right now. The sense of loss, the isolation, the strange kind of comfort too that also is part of the world stopping finally for a breath. While so many breathe their last. I’m trying to dig deep. Where is my heart and head in all this? Sometimes there is a surfacing, when I play, after a few, like the song above, dirty pictures. I need to get back to that one. I remember your skin. I remember not washing my hands. I remember kissing strangers. Now I’m tapping myself, touching my screen sending you dirty pictures. We got dirty pictures….

We’re asked to stay at home through this next month, end of May. How will we come out of this? If we only have 4 weeks, and I say only here because while this has been the most strange, sad and stressful thing I think our modern species has endured since WWII, there has been a kind of amazing quality to it. It’s felt like a dream at times. The days roll into one another. WTF I haven’t touched another human being in 6 weeks! Time has smoothed out. The rain, the sun, the natural world appears more alive, more promising and sacred. Healing. How can we keep that feeling past the SAH order and WFH?

I can only feel this semi-bliss because I am fortunate and grateful, so very grateful to have work. I didn’t even realize how lucky I was when I moved here last year and took this job teaching. You never know where you will be in a year… I would say. Right. What’s next? No one knows. I know a few things I’d like to do… Finish Forest-Time: Water [songs are not right, need another one, more intensity, more research perhaps], get back to programming and building my forest theremin series, start dreaming about Forest-Time: Air, octashedron, the throat chakra, the gatekeeper between the heart and the third eye chakra. The color is blue. Its intention is to be true. It is the keeper of stories, from this life and past. Vishudda.

You make me feel...better

Another Friday Night alone together with you

My favorite kind of night. Playing music, talking to friends. This time is something else. So much sadness, separation, anxiety and fear. Yet we are seeing and feeling so much that is really more real. Our hearts are opening and understanding what it is we really miss and need. I don’t know what I did last night. Some of it was all right I guess. I am building on it. Putting the bricks in place, knocking them down. Adjusting the footing and trying again. Need to work on better audio. Next week maybe I’ll live-stream and record with my tablet. It has better audio. I’ll have to do a sound check. Ha. What a concept. Tonight my friend LimeRickeyInternational is performing on Insta. Can’t wait to check them out. Probably, most certainly will be rocking and gorgeous-strange. My head is a bit foggy from a little more fun than usual. But I feel better. I feel love.

Friday Night Scream [screen] Therapy feat. Sasha K.

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One on one session available. Tune in to see how.

Doing it again tonight. Tune in this time to catch a sneak peak of Forest Time: Water, the next chapter of my sci-fi eco-feminist rock opera. Along with a tune from the before times and certainly some spontaneous banter. Join me for 26 minutes of something else you can’t control!

Performing yesterday for my class over Zoom seemed like a good idea. I sensed something was needed, something absurd to break the tension. It worked. We laughed. People talking over one another, weaving words and ideas. It felt like something was really happening. Then the meeting ended with this sentiment from the substitute teacher:

“Please, let’s not bore each other.”

What is happening now is surreal. A real dreamscape. Being in character I felt more like myself. More aligned with the strange existence we are almost but no not really getting used.

And what next? How will it end? What is the exit strategy? How can we go back to the way it was without killing each other? And then there is the thought that we can never go back. It will never be the same.

Yet this is us we are talking about. Humans. Homo Sapien. We are devilishly good at forgetting.


Working on it>>>forever

A few new bits of video coming into being. Drafts only but something. Forest Time: Water follows Forest Time: Fire that I produced in collaboration with many loving and generous friends last year for On the Boards North West New Works Fest. Also revamped and rocked it at Natural Discourse in the Tahoe National Forest last summer.

Just a little taste of one of the new songs from Forest Time: Fire. I miss that stage. Filmed at I-Park in CT. No documentation sadly. Some sort of contractual limitations. Sucks. Would not have agreed to be filmed if I knew I’d never see the footage. What can one do. Hire your own photographer!

Abstract for a performative panel":

We must teach to this moment. The links between the environment, economy and social justice are as clear as the numbers delineating this year, 2020. Our students demand and deserve we teach NOW. 

And now is about a new ecology, in marked opposition to the dominant exploitive model that threatens to bring our society and species to the verge of extinction. We must give our students an education that prepares them to find creative solutions based on ecological justice and sustainability for all species on the planet.

As sculptors, we are materialists engaged in an ever expanding field of spacial practice. We work intimately with matter, understanding over time its characteristics and potential for meaning. Can we ignore the source of our material? Can we ignore the impact of our actions outside or inside the studio, classroom, museum or gallery?

Weaving together a diverse range of theoretical influences from Haraway, hooks, and the Ecopedagogy of Freire and Kahn, this experimental panel explores the role of artist as an ecological activist educator in the 21st century. Attendees will learn about the intersecting concerns of art, ecology and sustainability and come away with tools and models for incorporating this cross-disciplinary approach to teaching, creative production and dissemination.

Special thank you to Jeremiah Barber who generously edited and added to the draft above. Collaboration is key!

Looking forward to my next installation in WA at University of Washington Tri-Cities. I’ll be showing 3 recent sculpture and 3 videos from Lessons from the Forest for an exhibition titled Sensitive Materials.


Script for Forest Time: Water @i_park.ct

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We were water babies. Bodies of water. 85% at birth we lose moisture as we age on average up to 40% in a lifetime. Created by two bodies caught in a flow, born from a watery womb, released into this drying world. Water bodies, aquatic monkeys, arboreal Pisces with warm blood and limbs.  

Our lungs are 83% water. Our skin 64%. The brain and heart are 73. Our bones are 31. The Earth’s surface is mostly water, 71%, most of which, 96% is saline and found in oceans. Glaciers and icecaps contain most of our fresh water, 68% but only make up 1.74 percent of our planetary water supply. Ground water, swamp water, rivers and lakes make up even less than glaciers. Biological water, body water, in animals and humans makes up around .0003 percent of Earth’s water supply. 

All the water that ever was is around us now. In the ground, in the sky, in the trees, in the lakes and streams, the ocean, in us. Imagine the same water you drink today was inside another body a hundred thousand years ago.

Full Script

Audio (coming soon)

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How it all started

Driving too fast in a borrowed ‘74 Bronco down a steep mountain road, it was before 8, on a crisp early spring morning when she lost control. Over correcting twice, to avoid flipping over, 19 years old, she decided to just let go of the wheel. Hands free, looking out through the windshield at a skyline of alpine peaks against a cloudless blue sky and the Lake below, her last thoughts were of beauty and love. The Bronco left the Earth, floating weightless. Time stopped, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, a slight smile curling up the edges of her mouth. Light sparkled across the Bronco’s chrome bumper, the lake rippled diamonds, the sun warmed sharp granite outcrops that surrounded the Lake like a crown. The truck pitched forward gently as the object began its descent. Below the road, between a grove of conifers and an enclave of cabins, the outstretched limbs of douglas fir tree caught the vehicle, halting the imminent crash five feet off the ground. The truck landed, swayed then held, the motor cut out, the tree’s branches cracked and groaned, settling under the sudden and profound weight of the Bronco and its  driver. Motionless, she opened her eyes to see tree limbs scattered and draped across the hood of the Bronco. In the sudden stillness she realized she was alive and breathing. Her heart beat pulsed in her ears drowning out the sound of birds. Warm blood flowed blue, brimming with proteins, iron, and oxygen streamed through her veins connecting organs, soul and skin. She opened the drivers side door, and found the ground freshly exposed from recently melted snow, forgiving and fragrant, Sierra soil smelling of piney musk and honey.  Stepping outside the very truck that could have been her tomb, listening to the sound of birdsong returning, the air around her warming with the new day, she realized she’d been saved by the tree. 

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Forest Time: Sagehen 8/10

I’m back at Sagehen preparing for the August performance. The piece I premiered at OtB in Seattle is coming back home. And it’s changing. But in some ways staying the same. Being outside and playing is super fun. My “stage” is perfect with a slew of defunct and operational data collection units, a platform for my rig, plenty of stuff for dancers to work with and space for the drummer.

The audience will have a 240 view, being able to curve around us along the foot path in the adjacent woods. Still figuring out the location for the projection field and what exactly the dancers will do. The fringe is out. Maybe I did get it out of my system in Seattle… anyways, the meadow here demands something more simple and clean. Enough going on as it is. I am considering a variety of tetra-she-drons, maybe one of each dancer (5-6). Or perhaps one shape for each element, a cube, an icosa-she-dron, an octa-she-dron and a tetra-she-dron…. with one bigger tetra to cover me at the end.

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Since my last post...

  • I am now the new Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Foundations at Western Washington University in Bellingham

  • I’ve been invited to participate in a fully funded artist residency resulting in a new site specific performance at I-Park in Connecticut this September

  • I am performing at Sagehen in Truckee in August with special guests for Natural Discourse at Sagehen

  • I spent 4 days and 3 nights performing a new live multi-media performance at OnTheBoards in Seattle with a dozen dancers from Western and we rocked it hard

  • I’m teaching at Cabrillo College all the month of July

  • The New Urban Naturalists are making a comeback!

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Look at my gorgeous dancers. I ordered them all NUN tee shirts. I can’t wait to work with them again. Such fiery spirits. And so full of light and love for each other. Best part of this whole thing might have been seeing these young strong women work together, support one another and just enjoy the process. I had my ups and downs. Could have done better the last night. But those are the breaks! Every performance is different. And according to audience feedback, no one was the wiser. In fact feed back was solid gold from both colleagues and students, though the tech people knew I’d totally mixed up my script Sunday and the dancers, they were pros and held in all together.

I am hooked. I am looking forward to getting some documentation from the venue for now this is what we have, and memories! Today re-recording and editing video to start outreach to new dancers for the Sagehen performance. This will be different, outside, and in the place that inspired the whole work, and maybe trajectory of my entire life and practice. Stay tuned in.


Experimenting again…

Students making test pieces for soft/hard sculptures at WWU. Cement and mixed media. Somethings happening!

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Hanging out in ID [Industrial Design] at Western Washington University, cutting parts from my students’ Ai files for future sculptures about platonic forms and digital to organic. Wish I had me one of these.

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Clearing....

As I was sweeping my front patio I found a little furry foot, a rabbit foot, by my best estimations. I could use the luck now but it also struck me. On another level. Death is all around. Be gracious and grateful, live fully and with love. This small animal lost a battle against another maybe slightly larger animal, all in the struggle to survive. Not really a battle against good and evil, but just life. That little foot said to me… keep living, learning and loving as long as you can.

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Some new work made recently. Bronze, wood and fringe. Something about it’s cascading verticality draws the body back to the earth, the elements. This series is about fire, that burns in us and around us. It felt good to make these. I hope to make more. Up on view at the Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA.

As the seasons change we do too. The last few months have been transformational. I have no clue where this is all going. I’m learning more everyday. About myself and the people I am lucky to live around and apart from. That’s really all I know. Gratitude. Focus on that.