Inversion / Submersion

Rivers are immensely complex habitats supporting intricate webs of life above and below the water surface. To explore this ecosphere, I created a floating camera system to gather video in Indian Creek, a tributary of the Anacostia River, which is threatened by pollution from plastics, runoff, chemicals, and high levels of bacteria. I inverted the videos to inhabit the perceptual space of the aqueous creatures living beneath the water surface.

 Digital tools like artificial Intelligence are currently being used by scientists to predict water quality patterns and analyze immense data sets. This is possible because the computational power of AI exceeds human capabilities. The creatures living on the river also possess perceptual competencies that extend far beyond the human range of acuity. By training the AI on a data set of images collected by the floating camera system I use the processing power of the AI to experience the river in an expanded way, as if through the senses of another being. I use these AI-generated images as reference points for two-dimensional works made with clay, water, and soil sourced from the riverbank.

While digital devices like AI appear to exist in disembodied spaces made up of code, circuitry, and electricity, the hardware is entirely reliant upon materials sourced from beneath the earth’s surface, like gold, copper, and cobalt. In a sense, humans are collaborating with the unique properties of these metals found in the earth to access other dimensions of processing power, sensation, and understanding.

 The line of demarcation that we draw between the natural and human realms is much more permeable and entangled than our logical constructions project it to be. Our tools, just like our bodies, are inextricable from the natural earthly habitats in which they are situated. I am using digital tools to explore these spaces between technology, nature, and humans.