“No Landmass between here and Antarctica; All That’s Left is Vibrations” is a sound performance piece. The performers merged organic material, stones, seaweed, shells, sand, etc. found at the site with technological apparatuses. Each performer took turns making various noises with their gathered matter inside the black basalt rock formations. Using an application on an iPhone, they would record the noise and allow it to loop, adding new monophonies to create a layered composition of ambient sound—a documentation of the texture of the beach.

Working with sound, I apply a method that I developed for this project termed “rotting,” which implements a change over time in the software that shifts it to a degree that it becomes unusable or unsustainable. This process eliminates all hi-fi or humanoid noises, so that the space itself becomes part of the subjectivity. This piece was intended to continue off these ideas by providing a visual representation of the editing process. The iPhone application works very similarly to how these pieces might get manipulated in Protools—but in an immediate way. It allowed for these sounds to playback within the space in real time. The site, as the title states, is the only land mass until Antarctica—past the Atlantic Ocean. This interested me on a physical level, with the way that sound waves work, expanding outward. It was a way of contacting or sharing information—not just through the performance documentation—but with Antarctica and the vastness between the two locations.

I am interested in sound as a medium, but often have found it difficult to present in visual art. My work always begins with an audio field recording and ends with a visual link to the original site. These pieces are not left as intact records but are filled with the edited and amplified unheard vibrations of the spaces from which they are taken.