EXPERIMENTAL GEOGRAPHY STUDIO

This is a sound art installation that was prefigured by my traveling to some of the many thousands of fresh water lakes in Minnesota.  I collected and labeled water from lakes, then, in a performance, loaded an instrument called a waterphone (a percussion instrument activated by water) with the lake water.  I then played musical scores—ones that I printed corresponding to each lake based on cartographic data—through an amplified and modulated sound system.  Surrounded by projected videos, archival material, and aerial photographs of the lakes, the end result for visitors was an experience of listening to the lakes speak.  I call this installation Limno Loqui, or, “lake speak.”  For those living in the U.S. Great Lakes region, the project points toward a proverbial “elephant in the room,” which is the fact that while much of the continent gasps and pines for fresh water, those in this region have the temporary luxury of pretending like it’s not a problem.  The water wars are coming to everywhere on earth with a perceived abundance of water, and Limno Loqui is an attempt to hear the warning directly from the lakes themselves.

PERFORMANCE SAMPLE WITH AUDIO

AUDIO TRACKS

Below is an album I made (hosted on Soundcloud) consisting of mixed and mastered recordings of the performances.

SCORES

The following scores—one of the main drivers of this installation—come from my work with the University of Minnesota’s U-Spatial community. To make the scores, I began with a dataset consisting of the GIS shape files for all the lake outlines in Minnesota (totaling over 11,000). Quite beautiful on their own, I manipulated the linework of some the lakes from which I collected water, digitally stretching and contorting them to fit onto the iconic musical staves. In this way, “playing the lake” has an indexical, double reference: the collected lake water is poured into the waterphone, and the sounds I make with the instrument follow the score of that specific lake.

Click on any of the scores below to open them in a larger lightbox for viewing.

VIDEO OF MAKING THE SCORES

PHOTOS FROM THE EXHIBIT

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This installation is based on my work as a "Human in the Data" fellow at the University of Minnesota's Institute for Advanced Study. Thank you to Adam Carrigan, Brian Coan, Jennifer Gunn, Benjamin Wiggins, Ryan Mattke, Jenny Schmid, Alexis Logsdon, and the U of M School of Music.

A special thank you to Chris Salter, who helped guide me through the technics and poetics of sound.