Immutable Swell
5” x 5” 3D Printed Resin
Immutable Swell is a sculptural representation of an ocean wave as it breaks onto land. The artwork was created by extracting over 500,000 data points from a custom buoy sensor placed in the waters of Cape Cod. This data was combined with my own own personal experience of swimming in the ocean to emerge as a complex 3D digital inscription of an ocean wave. By using software and motion analysis to observe the wave from a digital distance, I was able to distill invisible structures in the wave. Immutable Swell represents an opportunity for viewers to reflect upon the powerful and mysterious patterns found in the ocean.
Bruno Latour uses the term Immutable Mobiles to explain a flattening of reality that happens to scientific images enabling them to circulate globally—to become mobile, yet immutable. Its significance comes from optical consistency, a Renaissance visualization technique in linear perspective allowing the possibility of physical spaces and objects to go from one type of visual trace to another2.
The prescriptiveness of representation doesn’t box in the original data, however. A given representation of the data is only a referendum on itself, since the underlying information still exists and can still be looked at in an infinite number of ways. The Immutable Swell as portrayed here as the distilled moment of a body moving in a wave is not intended to foreground a specific conclusion, but instead it is asking for an emotional response from the viewer.
Shown at Creative Turbulence, at the Helix Center Psychoanalytic Society & Institute in New York City featuring work from Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, David McLeod and Berndnaut Smilde.
-
Latour, B. (1986). Visualisation and cognition: Drawing things together. Knowledge and
Society: Studies in th e Sociology of Culture Past and Present , 6, 1–40.
-
Barad, Karen Michelle. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press, 2007.
Gratz Industries Objects
5’ x 5’ welded bronze and 5’ x 6’ welded steel screens
Architectural screens derived from mid-century furniture inspired from the Gratz Industries archive collection.
Fabrication: Gratz Industries, NYC
Earth Viewing Experiment (E.V.E)
1 meter cubed, Aluminum & Acrylic , 2015 (w/ Gabriel Winer)
E.V. (Longnook) - 1 meter cubed, Aluminum & Acrylic , 2015 (w/ Gabriel Winer)
E.V. (Earth Viewing) is an attempt to circumvent dominant, culturally constructed modes of environmental perception by seeking an alienated perspective of the terrestrial environment. Techniques used in the remote sensing of alien planets base the form and function of the device on the requirements for durability and accuracy of perception in the subject environment. We invert the gaze and application of these methods to focus on an earthbound context.
The initial experiment (E.V. 1) was conducted at 42.020 N, -70.037 W, JD 2457263.375. A one-meter aluminum and masonite cube was positioned at the outer margin of an outwash plain with a single aperture oriented toward coastal ocean. Individuals inhabited the device for periods of 10 minutes and reported several perceptual shifts, particularly spacetime transformations and increased awareness of their own symbolic processing of the landscape.
Shipping Container Residence
960 Square Feet
Manderson, SD
A three shipping container home for a client in South Dakota.
The design was driven by the cinematic landscape of the property and the first floor features a side open continer (or a trenchcoat full of contraband)...and the west facing facade has three operable porthole windows that were reclaimed from a ship in Europe.
Design: An architectural collaboration with Raeven Architecture (Karla Karwas)
Fabrication: Supercubes
Rocky Ledges Barn Renovation
1200 sq. ft.
Cortlandt Manor, NY
A gut renovation of a barn situated on a large pile of boulders and rocks.
Design: An architectural collaboration with Raeven Architecture (Karla Karwas)
Fabrication and Building: M. Lanzano