Telephones, Tape, Hydrophones, Soundscapes
As a kid visiting Epcot in the 1980s, I had a vision of the future— all of us nestled in steel and glass living rooms, answering the hologram phone. In the 21st century, I find myself reaching for the very things in my own living room from the 1980s. The comfort in common objects meant for connection.
Longest Day / Longest Night (2024)
Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Longest Day / Longest Night is a practice in collective memory and digital preservation recalling sounds from historical solstice dates unknowingly cataloged in smartphone videos and public archives. This interactive installation invites museum visitors to pick up a telephone and dial an extension from a geographic location labeled switchboard, and listen to sounds that may feel familiar or perplexing on the longest day and longest night on our planet.
Images: Anthony Washington Photography | Press, Washingtonian June 2024
DÔME DO, WE (A Space For Reset)
After Yukihisa Isobe’s Air Dome - False Friends QUAD (2024)
Collaborative Cataloging Japan, Philadelphia, participating artist “False Friends”
DÔME DO,WE (a space for rest) is a wooden geodesic dome, an open-structure composed of over 100 triangular modules. Sited under the shade canopy of a majestic Sycamore grove on Eakin’s Oval along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, this ephemeral urban oasis is inspired by Yukihisa Isobe's Air Dome (1970), as a site for art, ideas, and communal experience.
DÔME DO,WE was conceptualized as a transmissive architecture, allowing for air, sound, and light to pass freely through it. Functioning primarily as an organizing framework for placemaking and presentation rather than as a built shelter. It is a matrix of mutually supportive edges, an entity whose strength and durability surpasses that of any individual wooden member. I view this as aspirational, symbolic of the potential of collective ideas and shared social experiences. The visual geometry of the architecture intends to enliven the creative spirit of all those who gather within and around the dome.
The title DÔME DO,WE is a playful pun on the French phrase dôme, d’oui (dome of yes) and reflects its optimistic vision. Drawing contextual parallels to Air Dome, this project resonates with the climate of the late 60s/early 70s—a period marked by dynamic cultural and environmental pressures similar to those we experience today. — Aaron Igler
Wooder
Performing under the moniker of Wooder, Carolyn Zaldivar Snow, Eugene Lew, and Aaron Igler will dive into the aqua-acoustic landscape of Eakin's Oval, focusing their observational ear(s) on the nearby fountains. Using field-recorded audio and modular synthesis the trio will explore the spectral and temporal correlations of hyper-natural turbulence, mapping it across a quadraphonic system.
Atlantic Drift; Women of Ambient Music - Selected Works (2024)
Envelop - San Francisco, CA
Curated by Cynthia Bernard for Envelop, Atlantic Drift was selected for two listening sessions in a 32 speaker immersive space, joining a continuous mix of international women composing ambient music.
Brittle Geometries / Delicate Feedbacks (2023)
Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Inspired by the 1989 New Yorker essay, “The End of Nature” and the glacial illustrations of Wilhelmina Barns Graham we wanted to bring the sounds of a current, prolonged, delicate and brittle ending into the museum through the sounds of glacial melt. The sound of unified displacement as listeners focus on field recordings of glacial melt and observe graphic scores of these sounds. Is there a scaling back of a complicated and slowly unraveling end? Together? This installation invites the audience to meditate on this question, while triggering sounds through tape delays and advances in a speedup or slowdown of glacial echoes.
A digital Installation may be found here.
Image: yellow cassette players retrofitted from scientific equipment, graphic score “On Process” by Tyler Neidermayer, participating composer.
