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Slipstreamkonza

 

 is an art/science research project that imagines carbon flux and field data on grassland photosynthesis as a 'telemimetic' process. 


Carbon respiration data over a three month interval in 2001 is sonified using a method derived from John Cage. atmospheres of sound correlate to medium format photographs shot at the Konza prairie biological research station and video onsite where  auto chamber apparatus measures carbon respiration on the prairie.  

At the Konza Prairie, since 1997, diurnal and annual data are collected as eddy correlation  or eddy covariant flux measurements. From two of the sites, a located on the Rannels Ranch next to the Konza  field station, wireless net carries the live data online for collection and analysis. 

 

Konza is the Osage term for “south wind.” Like breath on a mirror, the metaphor of photosynthesis as konza suggests the evanescent imprint of an invisible and inaudible (at least on the human scale) dynamic. How to generate a cybernetic process-space that progressively and recursively self reveals, or ‘voices’ itself? 

Jay Ham, PhD, agronomist, assisted with data and physical access to the prairie. Nick Fox-Gieg and Henry Warwick, new media artists, assisted with sonic transpositions from the carbon respiration data set. 

 Slipstreamkonza photomontage prints were awarded the James D. Phelan Award in Printmaking from the San Francisco Arts Commission in 2003. The work was selected by Constance Lewallen, then of the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive.

 

Sonification videos were shown at Stony Brook University in 2008, as part of Sonic Residues, an exhibition curated by Margaret Schedel, Zabet Patterson, and others. An academic paper on Slipstream Konza, was presented and published for COSIGN 2004 (on computational semiotics), Split, Croatia.

 

Download "Slipstreamkonza Semiotics: Towards a Telemimetic Sublime in the Data Landscape." 

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