A Waterfall of Falling Sounds that I Catch Dreaming

Yolande Harris

2020

13’44” video and sound, single screen

Can our conscious listening effect the world around us? This dreamscape pulls together a collection of moments in sounds and images of the “super bloom” of wild flowers in California, wind in Joshua Tree National Park, a visit to James Turrell’s Roden Crater, full rapids at Grand Falls on Navajo and Hopi land in Northern Arizona, the fragile crystal crunching of a lava field near Flagstaff, and the liminal spaces of the Pacific Ocean coast of the Monterey Bay. The dream begins with sounds I recorded at the pediatric intensive care unit of Stanford Children’s Hospital, a liminal space suspended in the in-between. There are times when, like the waterfall, I fall into a moment of my day and sense a tangible connection to planet earth, moments that lift me out of my everyday consciousness and into a suspended sense of awareness. The harp is my portal to this state of awareness, so here, at this moment of the global pandemic and climate crisis, I offer these sounds as a meditation on our interconnection with lives of all kinds, all of whom dream, and as a prayer for our connection and love for our planet.

Sound Pond Meditation

Anne Niemetz

2002

Featuring Jaffa, Luke and Spotty

Kugutsu Kagura

Takashi Ikegami

2020

In Muteku,Japan, I exhibited Android + Nou theater player performance.
The android Alter3 was meditating by looking at his own hands.
The file I sent to you was played when Alter 3 was meditating.

Music composed by Itsuki Doi

Bodies

Gil Kuno

Chant for Peace

Siddharth Ramakrishnan

2020

These are a series of chants for peace to the world. The Gayathri Mantra for focus and dedication. The Universal prayer is for the well being of all, and to remove sorrow from everyone. Finally the Shanti mantra that invokes peace for the earth, the animals, the plants, and all the beings. Om Shanti Shanti Shanti

Internatural 1: Dawn Rehearsal

Nina Waisman

2020

Excerpt from video documentation of a dance+vocal performance at South Tufa, Mono Lake, 2019

A small group of aliens arrive at Mono Lake. Where they come from, the way to learn about something is to synchronize with its rhythms and behaviors, to let it tune them from the inside out.

On their first visit, they encounter water, tufa, cyanobacteria, alkali flies, volcanos, gulls, humans. And digital logic.

Can we humans similarly learn more sustainable ways from our elders, i.e. every other life form on the planet – before we extinguish most of them?

Written, Designed, Directed by:
Nina Waisman

Choreographed collaboratively by:
Hyosun Choi (also performing)
Paola Escobar (also performing)
Hyoin Jun (also performing)
Samantha Mohr (also performing)
Nina Waisman
Flora Wiegmann (early project movement research)

Vocal Composition / Performance:
Carmina Escobar

Mono Lake Biology Consultant:
Dr. David Herbst

Cinematographer (documentation and related, forthcoming video):
Christopher Wormald

2nd Camera (documentation and related, forthcoming video):
Sisely Treasure

Forest Island Project:
This project was produced by the Forest Island Project in collaboration with U.C. Santa Barbara’s Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory and Valentine Reserve. The Forest Island Project is an arts and cultural organization in the Eastern Sierra promoting original cultural production through it’s residency and programming. www.forestislandproject.com

Thanks:
The artists are very grateful for support of all kinds offered by Kiersten Puusemp, Christopher James, Dr. Carol Blanchette, Annie Barrett, Michael Light, Dr. Penelope J. Boston, Dr. Sharmila Bhattacharya, Corina Sanchez, Sherryl Taylor, Kate and Paul Page, Chris Orr, Brian O’Connell, Alice Konitz, Valentine Eastern Sierra Reserves and The Mono Lake Committee.

Parallel Graphic Waves

Bill Fontana

2020

Parallel Graphic Waves is part of an ongoing series of meditative media works I have created during the last 9 months of the pandemic. These have all involved my visiting points along the entrance of San Francisco Bay and have explored wave patterns as abstract graphic shapes interacting with coastal structures. The sounds were recorded with accelerometers buried in the sand to create an abstracted sound of the sea.

Photoacoustic Meditation

Clarissa Ribeiro

2020

Back in 1880, Alexander Graham Bell was exploring the photoacoustic effect experimenting with long-distance sound transmission using his photophone to transmit vocal signals by reflecting sun-light from a moving mirror to a solar cell receiver. The photoacoustic effect is the formation of sound waves following light absorption in a given material and most of the research and applications utilizing the effect is concerned with the near ultraviolet and infrared spectral regions. For the [Alien] Star Dust: Signal to Noise, a 24-hour virtual event on the Winter Solstice, December 21, the artist explores the phenomenon creating a device that converts sunlight infrared radiation into a sound ( note D frequency, 293.665 Hz , Sacral Chakra, South America, orange ) that will be streamed live on December 21st from an old metal bridge by the Atlantic Ocean in the city of Fortaleza, Brazil. The container for the electronics is a data-sculpture from the combination of audio captures from the Atlantic coast and Pacific coast shore line shared on WhatsApp between Professor Victoria Vesna and the artist. The combined audio samples’ dB variation is converted into a numerical list and visualized as a points’ cloud that algorithmically generates a wave-like structure. The symbolic device brings, as a fragile portal fabricated in translucent PLA, the global and cosmic energy to the place chosen – a sunset spot by the ocean near a 114 years old community – an occupation not recognized by the local government being the majority of the population descendants of migrants coming from the desertic countryside of the state in search for a better life in the capital.