Please listen with headphones for best audio quality.
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This audio-based artwork about the ecological history of the Eastern Oyster has four components:
(A) FM Radio broadcast; Oyster-soundscape broadcast as a continuous loop from a temporary radio station inside the Little Red Lighthouse (May-June 2010). Viewers in the vicinity of the lighthouse can hear the soundscape on their radios, layered with the ambient noise of the George Washington Bridge, overhead.
Materials: Lighthouse; transmitter; antenna; single-channel soundscape
Duration: 4 variations on a 15’ loop
(B) Site-specific sound sculpture; Oyster-soundscape installed in stairwells at MIT Media Lab in Cambridge (April-May 2010) and at The Kitchen in New York City (May-June 2010). Viewers walk up through the four layers of sound, each corresponding to a moment in the ecological history of the Eastern Oyster.
Materials: Stairwell; four speakers; 15 minute four-channel soundscape
(C) Large-scale multimedia drawing; exhibited with the sound sculpture.
Materials: Chalk, ink, acrylic, charcoal, salt, and oil on paper and mylar; oyster shells
(D) Four-channel video installation; exhibited with the sound sculpture (at The Kitchen only). Footage shot from inside the Little Red Lighthouse, New York City, looking north, east, south, and west over the Hudson river; played in reverse on four vertically stacked tube televisions
Materials: Digital video (water, sky, boats, trees, lighthouse); televisions.
Duration: 120’0” (total footage)
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Partially funded by the MIT Council for the Arts. Logistical support provided by MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology; Redhouse Art Radio; J.T. Boehm (The River Project); Pete Malinowski (The New York Harbor School); Rodney Rountree (Marine Ecology and Technology Applications); MIT Sea Grant; Alexis Bhagat; Chris Clepper; Meg Rotzel; Madeleine Claire Elish; Marieke Rosenbaum. Some sound samples provided by The Freesound Project (users Benboncan, Stevebob69, and kathol).
Drawing produced in collaboration with Sarah Dobbins.
