Seasons (Taos County) - Interactive Installation
Latest News
4/28/2023: Sound collection has begun. This one was a fun one while watching the morning snow sublimate, and melt off the roof. Water in the desert is a rare-ish sound indeed! Will be doing several traverses of the county in the next couple of weeks.
3/31/2023: Filming for 1 Month in spring is well underway, and the sky drama around Taos this spring has been extraordinary!
Overview
Seasons (Taos County) is an interactive installation produced by the collaborative team of Taos County, NM based artist Kiri Hargie and Portland, OR based musicians Abram Morphew and Bethany Carder (The Binary Marketing Show). The installation consists of a 3 part abstract video projection recorded daily for one month during each of the changing seasons in Taos County, with an interactive soundscape controlled by movements of people within the project space using passive IR sensors. The soundscape is composed of a sonic model of the natural history of Taos, from treated field recordings, synths and vocals intended to emulate the region’s formation spanning deep time to the present day. The installation invites participants to ponder what it means to move as part of the natural world, how does our presence as humans uniquely affect it, and how do we connect, observe, and interact with and as part of nature co-evolving through time?
Video
Part 1: 1 Month in Winter (18:52): https://youtu.be/Iqo4rGchTBs
Part 1 is a moving snapshot of our natural world created from 1.5 minutes of video footage filmed each day from 13 Dec. 22 – 13 Jan. 2023. These are the colors of winter in Taos County, as seen by the camera, composed by a programmatic sleight of hand and some simple video editing. This segment is inspired by Rio Grande textile artists and their long history of storytelling in color and pattern. Colors, patterns, and tradition born, bound, and inspired ultimately by nature.
Part 2: 1 Month in Spring (2:30"): https://youtu.be/Srr1up9Lvgk
Part 2 began filming on 20 March 2023. This moving snapshot uses 2 x 1 minute video segments recorded daily, and processed similarly to 1 Month in Winter. This segment is inspired by the return of spring and reflects the colors of spring in bloom, and the motion of birds.
Part 3: 1 Month in Summer: begins filming July 2023
Interactive audio
Audio to accompany the video projection is created by movements of people within the project space using passive IR motion sensors connected to Raspberry Pi synths playing up to 256 unique sounds from a composed soundscape.
The soundscape will consist of a sonic model of the natural history of Taos, composed from treated field recordings, synths and vocals intended to emulate the region’s formation spanning deep time to the present day. A sonic offering to our Earthling kin. Audio recording begins in April 2023.
Passive IR Sensor & Sound Demo: https://youtu.be/Cu_2l0-JP2I