POD.FIELD

2014

Pod.Field is several, wooden beehive-shaped forms scattered around a large gallery space. Each structure has long, red, flexible feelers with cupped, pod-like, felt forms attached to their ends. Visitors are invited to push these stalks aside in order to wind through implied pathways of the installation.

As people brush the rods away, these stems bounce and trigger attached bamboo chimes to produce clacking, insect-like sounds. The more movement there is in the space, the more it fills with natural sound. As the entire space becomes activated, people are engulfed in a rising sonic environment that feels alive.

EXHIBITIONS

Please Touch, Target Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, Alexandria, VA 2016

Employees Only, Oakland University Art Gallery, Rochester Hills, MI, 2015

Art + Tech, Art Arbor Art Center, Ann Arbor, MI, 2015

Factor.field, BOX 13 ArtSpace, Houston, TX, 2014

Maker Faire Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, 2014

This nature-inspired artwork takes its visual cues from systems where individuals look alike and function together like a single organism, such as flocks of birds, schools of fish and fields of tall reeds that blow in the wind. The rise of insect noise in high summer fields is my inspiration for the sound. As one travels through the landscape, this drone defines personal space and puts one in a direct relationship to your surroundings.

Pod.Field can be read as an exaggerated representation of sensing. As the feelers are triggered, the bodies are “turned on.” When the system is activated as a whole, the bodies symbolically communicate as a community. This visual and sensory system is meant to remind audiences that the body is always sensing the environment while the ecosystem is always responding to the body’s presence.  Everyone exists as an individual and as a component of a vast, elaborate organism.

Pod.Field was designed in 3D software and cut on a laser cutter. The repeated three-dimensional forms fit together with slot-fit joinery. This strategy allows me to flat-pack the forms for shipping and assembly on site, making it extremely portable.

POD DETAILS