Dr Diana Chester and Alex Braidwood Juried Artists
SAE
Artist Statement
Sub_Merge is a space and time for active listening consistent with a meditative practice. A meditation on the collective experiences possible within and surrounding water and ice, on the liminality of water/ice as life-force in our world, and the temporal experience of water/ice as a constant through the passage of multiple time periods in a human life, and through the life of our planet. In this work, water/ice is used as both a literal medium and source for collecting the data referenced. It is expressed in the work as an aesthetic metaphor that allows for a fluid interpretation and expression of water as life, balance in water as critical to life, and the passage of life as reliant on water.
Sub_Merge is a speculative soundscape for listeners to emerge with stories and connections to water. It creates a collective listening experience built from water itself, from scientific measurements of water, from ice, vapor, and liquid. It attempts to place the audience in relation to beautiful and intentional recordings of waters from around the world through deep listening practices.
About the artists
Alex Braidwood is a sound artist, media designer, and educator who maintains a practice exploring issues of sustainability at the intersection of art and science. He has exhibited art, led workshops, lectured on his work, and performed live at a variety of events and venues throughout the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He has been an artist in residence in an Australian mountain village, on an Iowa farm, at a mid-western biological field research station, and on Isle Royale National Park. Alex is Director of the Artist-in-Residence program at Iowa Lakeside Lab field research station as well as Director of Graphic Design Graduate Education and faculty in the Human Computer Interaction program at Iowa State University. He is Artistic Director and Graphic Designer for the arts organization Group Creatives, a Des Moines-based organization helping midwest cities develop and implement public art master plans. He also serves as Secretary for the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology (MSAE) board of directors, as the MSAE representative on the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, and as President of the World Listening Project.
Dr. Diana Chester is an artist and sound studies scholar whose work produces critically influential studies, methods, and outputs that use sound to traverse disciplinary boundaries and explore sonic capacities core to the human condition. Current Projects include, ‘Listening to Earth,’ a collaborative research project exploring the development of listening instruments to record memories stored inside Earth, ‘Harmonising with Mountains,’ an exploration of Mongolian traditional musical practices for communicating with the environment, and ‘Sounding the Ice,’ a partnership with the Australia Antarctic Division that uses data sonification to express changes to sea-ice in Antarctica. Chester in Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Sydney, editor of Interference Journal, and vice president of the World Listening Project.
Credits: Dr Diana Chester and Alex Braidwood
URL: https://www.dianachester.com & https://alexbraidwood.com/