PROGRESS NOTES

I completed the soil sensor setup and am sending two values (temperature and humidity) via Arduino and P5 serial to my P5 sketch. I began testing how these values will impact images.

Last week both Andrew and Despina felt that I was stuck on the tech challenges and should instead finalize the content, video effects, and a vision of the installation. Despina felt that perhaps the butoh, holes, and rock mama should all be in separate spaces. Similar feedback came from my initial “visitor journey” tests. As such I may only be focusing on holes as my MVP/thesis deliverable.

Content updates:

  • video/s will be shown in holes and impacted by soil sensors
  • impacts on images/video
    • need to continue testing (and using real values) with the aim is to dismantle human perspective and shift into nonhuman topographies
  • video of holes: need to film a couple more near the swamp
    • water creatures/water presence in holes and any effects on the video help to reflect the fluidity and flow where matter is not fixed but there is ‘motion’ in matter, chaotic, changing
  • video of the butoh dance with a rock: I shot tests but not the performance itself (may be separate)
  • rock: live feed (left for last/separate)

CONCEPT TEST/ VISITOR JOURNEY

You go to see an installation that contemplates relationality with other-than-human entities. Upon entrance, you become aware of the sounds of some sort of shifting, moving, water, wind, and clicking. The room is dimly lit with an orangey warm “after sunset” feel.

There are two rocks (human head size) connected by wiring as if embraced by it. They evoke images of shinto kami with their agency/personhood, yet the wires elicit the materiality of technology.

(an homage to Meoto Iwa)

Not far from the rocks are three mounds of soil with images being emitted from inside of them.

 

 

You see a hole in the soil mound with a screen at the bottom and connectors leading out. You distinguish sounds from under the water. The image shows a woman crossing water and grotesquely dancing with a rock. The image gets softly distorted, shuffled, and moved across the screen. You want to see what happens as she seems to be struggling and finally disappears under the water.

You walk over to another smaller hole nearby. This soil is more sandy and dry. The screen is smaller, about 4” in diameter. There are movements of rocks passing across. The third image is surrounded by soil that is pungent like a swamp. In the hole, you see tunnels of holes. They reach a wet area where tiny organisms move around.

IMAGE TESTS (link for the above)

INITIAL FEEDBACK (more to come)

Yes, there are things here that echo what I already heard in earlier discussions:)

POSITIVE NOTES

  • The contrast of rocks and tech suggested the tied worlds of non-human and human.
  • “As I stare into these portals, perspective is difficult to find.”
  • Looking into a hole typically, one sees nothing but here, a non-human, dynamic world is revealed.
  • Complex… conjures both human dominion of nature and ancient deep spiritual beliefs.

ISSUES TO ADDRESS / POSSIBLE CHANGES

  • Butoh is where the human body is a medium, but it ceases to be the medium on a screen and becomes the subject. It seems that an expanded/longer butoh on the screen take away from the non-human world?
    • MM: Perhaps remove butoh performance or use lightly (as in the sample). Chip away to reveal the piece.
  • Seeing wires by holes takes away from magical layering; it makes me think of tech as a medium, not part of the earth.
    • MM: No need to show wires. Let soil do the dancing, and visitor can sense but no need to see!
  • Use spray mist
    • MM: gimmicky?
  • Preferred the earlier concept of one mama rock/ guardian 
    • MM: maybe huge/ the source of sounds 
  • Is there a comment on religion? It immediately evokes Christianity for audiences in US or other Western nations unless someone is well versed on Easter religions; needs much explanation and knowledge base to understand
    • MM: animism is about reverence/ritual so maybe this is ok?
    • MM: I removed )Mama, Soil, and Holey Spirit) from title… religious connotations become focus (even though I am presenting non-human triad; there are examples of both traditional and indigenous cultures where holes in soil indicate spirit portals
  • I love this shifting/ moving sound paired with the stillness of rocks. 
    • MM: emphasize these sounds
  • What else does the room look like? Is it filled with dirt? White walled?
  • Is there meant to be a correspondence/ association between the rock being carried in the video and these rocks? Same size/ color?
  • Are rocks simply wrapped around or do wires penetrate rocks in any way? I’m not fully getting how they will evoke agency. I feel like maybe its the interaction with the wires that evokes this, no? It’s the relationality between the two that elicits animism? 
    • MM: The manner of wire connecting will be important
  • In the diagram its the opposite. Unless I’m reading it wrong
  • Will it be stinky? including smells into installation?
  • I have questions about the human element in this. Feels almost subservient. 
  • I love how it feels like nature has usurped technology (the supposed anti-nature) to communicate and reveal itself.
  • I honestly think I would feel reverence for nature, a sense of uncanny, fear/ awe, and provoke me to think more deeply about a future relationship between nature/ technology that is not dichotomous.
  • I feel like as its written out now, the videos in the holes dominate this installation.They’re great but over powering the rocks, I feel.
  • I like how its not clear who is acting upon who – human/ soil-rocks. You have human elements, but do not necessarily feel like an imposing force. I like their ambiguity here.
  • Actually feels like these rocks and soil are the ones using technology – the human is being subsumed by it. Will nature take over technology and make us subservient

 

The user journey as an installation revealing layers / movements in soil & holes makes sense to me

I guess I’m mostly curious with your narrative using both Meoto Iwa as homage and butoh as connecting to soil.

Why this form of dance/movement? Why this particular site?

I agree that using actual wires seems to change the tone of the installation, but there is something acutely intimate about demonstrating that connection somehow.

How are you framing this tied world between human / non-human (is tech always human?? )