Strong, Weak and Strange (2015)

15:00 single projection on split wall; macro video, field recording, cello

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A video split between two walls about tiny materials and using sound to bridge life at different scales. Part of OUTRO: Go Play Outside! at ACRE Projects.

From curator Ross Jordan: Her approach is the same as the childhood scientist that live(d/s) in all of us, who combed the house and front yard for interesting subjects. Katherine transforms bursting and bubbling experiments with water, oil, milk, hair, soil, Tums ®, grass, and sand into dramatic audio/visual projects that envelope spaces.
 

Hair Oil WaterHair Oil WaterHair Oil WaterHair Oil Water

Hair, Oil and Water (2012–)

hair, oil and water in a cup

bathtub-hair-square

Belly of the Whale (2012)

cello

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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.

 

beginnings of endings (2012) (2012)

macro video, close-up recordings around the house

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In beginnings of endings (2012), sound and image are used together to construct a materiality for tiny worlds. I wanted to evoke vulnerability and empathy by enveloping the audience in a heightened, tactile and imaginary version of what the world at this scale might sound like, feel like. The macro lens tends to draw us into an investigation of the material qualities of what is pictured; the sound in beginnings further explores and describes a potential materiality of the captured landscapes, objects and creatures.

By incorporating the subtly human element of “performed” sound (recorded while manipulating household objects), pairing images with sounds that are simultaneously appropriate and slightly disconcerting, and using a highly saturated sound palette, the sound brings a physicality and weight to the threats inherent to life on a small scale.