Some back-up materials and descriptions

Steel, Ice & Stone is a public sound and image interactive installation project that creates an immersive environment of abstract sensory media for the viewer to connect and reflect on a memory in their lives.

The installation consists of nine large—4 x 5 foot—color abstract images of pieces of steel, ice and stone. The imagery is united with a sound composition (still under development) melding birdcalls with machine sounds, many of which I recorded.

The media components convey how I process events of my surroundings: the still image holds the moment captured in time, while the sound weaves through that moment in the present. This creates a layered experience surrendering my thoughts and emotions to the balance of absence and presence in time.

The expression of the piece is that loss, and the emotions it evokes, are both mutable and indelible: hence the abstract images of cold, hard objects and sound morphing from the unforgiving pulse of machinery to the gentle warbling of a birdsong. I believe that as time rushes forward, we lose the ability to assess our surroundings until events in our lives become memories. This installation aims to re-awaken in the viewer an overlooked thought or emotion by the interplay of the sound and images; it presents the opportunity for connection and introspection with a moment of their past.

The nuance of recollection is very powerful for me. Sensual recall of events play heavily in my work. This work gives the viewer the ability to absorb the work peripherally by lingering through a maze of suspended images.

The viewer walks through the installation: a constellation of nine large—4 x 5-foot—photographs suspended from the ceiling of the exhibition space. In doing so, the viewer trips sensors set to play sound bytes from sound units embedded in each piece.

The photographs were made on 4x5 film using a view camera. The images were scanned, digitally processed and printed via laser on C-print paper. The images are wet-mounted on linen and stretched on wooden stretcher bars—like a painting. They are further outfitted with a sound unit—which is under development—and the suspending hardware.

The sound is the combination of birdcalls from indigenous North American birds and machine sounds, many of which I recorded. The dance between the sound of a line borer and the mournful calls of a pair of owls create a sensorial metaphor to awaken a distant memory in the viewer as they walk through the piece.

Each image expresses a complete thought; however it is the collection of the images, like a collection of words to form a sentence, which connect the physical objects to the ideas they represent. Getting the sensations just right—formed by walking past an abstract image and hearing an abstract though vaguely familiar sound—is the life of the installation.

The ideal audience for this work is anyone who has an interest in abstract photography and enjoys engaging with media in an uninhibited way. At my exhibitions, I've seen people of all ages interact with my work: Children try to fool the sensors into playing; an elderly lady told me that she understood the meaning the work when she experienced it rolling by in her wheelchair and then backed away to see its entirety. Steel Ice & Stone continues in this vein but in a more private, reflective expression.