45 Wetlands
audio installation, 2019
45 Wetlands was a multi-channel audio installation at Oberlin College. The work aimed to mediate and re-present the force of the living-together of the southern Florida swamps, its inhabitants' diurnal activity, and above all the rhythms of form within the sounding-together of frogs, birds, and other creatures.
This world was imported into the performance space through a spatially flexible encounter, with the show space's shifting lights outlining patterns of sonic regions and alignments across the heterogeneous 14-speaker installation. Much like the varied breeding communities within the swamps, the space was divided into pockets of speakers reflecting on each other, with the multichannel field recordings distributed among them. In this sense, audience members had an opportunity to wander within a meditation of the intricate sonic webs of this ecosystem.
In order to present different sonic characters in different spatial pockets, a motley speaker orchestra was assembled, composed of studio monitors, hemisphere speakers, stage monitors, hi-fi PA speakers, and junky portable amps. They were positioned behind curtains, around corners, and up balconies to create an experience whose element was heterogeneity. The installation ran on a 45-minute loop which went in and out of phase with the light cues over the course of the evening.
The promo poster for the event is made up of photos taken during recording sessions in 2018 and early 2019.