Katherine Trimble

Belly of the Whale came out of investigations in macro photography and how looking at this scale affects our relationship to objects and their material qualities. I became interested in the seemingly inherent narratives that tiny objects begin to disclose when we look closely at them–how minute surfaces become massive landscapes and solids reveal an abundance of voids–and the inexplicable empathy that develops when we observe them at their own scale.

Belly of the Whale explores this scale shift sonically–representing the uncanny feeling of the simultaneously tiny and huge situated in landscapes that are at once both vast and intimate. Close miking was a natural analog for the macro lens–both techniques strongly capturing the materiality of the objects and spaces they are recording; in one case microscopic architectural spaces in the physical world, in the other the tight acoustic spaces created by the mic’s proximity to the cello.

Screened at Strange Beauty: Aural Fixation in Durham, North Carolina in 2013.