Ellen Wagener
Cloud Bank, Arizona, 2012
Pastel on paper

The Southwest landscape was explored by photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis in the luminous silver gelatin vintage photography that came to symbolize that particular landscape. “It’s such a big dream, I can’t see it all,” said Curtis, whose photographs inspired the diptych Cloud Bank.

I started the pastel painting as a Sharpie sketch on a cocktail napkin during a drive from Albuquerque to Las Cruces, New Mexico.

I don’t bother using a camera.

I close my eyes and say “click” as the image seeps into my memory bank. I breath deep and try to take in the spirit of a place rather than the tiny details, which come back to me later while I work. Drawing photographic memories and breathing life into them is similar to praying and weaving.

Jacob Miller Smith
School of Music
Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts, Arizona State University

A Thread Submerged In Horizon, 2019

Digital sound recording

A Thread Submerged In Horizon was composed in late 2019 to accompany Cloud Bank by Ellen Wagener. It is a work for stereo electronics that features the very small-scale sounds of melting ice in different contexts. The work aims to present a perspective of a vast underwater landscape. 

Jacob Miller Smith is an environmental composer and acoustic ecologist. His recent work focuses on water as a compositional material in many ways, heavily using hydrophones and electronic techniques to manipulate and present sonic material. Smith regularly collaborates with performers, artists, and scientists in his work. More information can be found at JMSmithMusic.com.

Ellen Wagener
$8 Million Dollar Gender Reveal Party Gone BAD in 5 Acts, 2019    

On April 23, 2017, Border Patrol agent Dennis Dickey held a “gender reveal party” in the desert south of Tucson. He brought his gun and filmed the event.

He shot at a target that sparked the Sawmill fire, a blaze that lasted over a week and took more than 800 firefighters to extinguish. The fire destroyed over 47,000 square acres of Arizona desert.

Dickey shouted in fear, “Pack it up; let’s pack it up!” three times as the blaze began.

The wildfire cost $8.2 million to extinguish. In a plea deal, Dickey agreed to pay $220,000 in restitution.

It’s a boy!

Andrew Robinson
School of Arts, Media and Engineering
Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts, Arizona State University

Audio for $8 Million Gender Reveal Party Gone BAD in 5 Acts, 2019
Digital sound recording

For the design of this sound piece, I wanted to make something that would emphasize the absurdity of the gender reveal party accident and the destruction it caused. To do this, I used the actual audio recording from the video of the incident, dramatically slowed it down, and recorded feedback loops with it. This spectacularly transforms the sound by emphasizing all the nuances present in the audio, such as the roaring hiss of the fire or the booming of trees falling over. The composition follows the progression of the event as depicted in Ellen Wagener’s paintings.

Andrew Robinson is a multimedia artist and designer whose focus is on creating immersive environments with responsive soundscapes, music-generated animations, and augmented musical instruments. Robinson has been making music since the age of 14, and with computer software programs such as Max MSP and Ableton, he found a way to expand the style of his performance and compositional work. Many of his projects have focused on using instruments as a means for controlling an immersive performance space. Robinson states that music and sound are essential to who he is as an artist and is what guided him toward becoming an immersive artist and designer.

Bill Dambrova 
She Asked Me My Name and I Gave Her My Social Security Number; That’s How They Got My Spleen,
2016
Oil and acrylic on canvas

Life tends to represent itself with a flourish. We see it in the plumage that birds use for display; blooming, brightly colored flowers; and even the long whipping tails of reptiles. I also see it in the meandering veins, arteries, and organs within our bodies. My artwork is inspired by hidden worlds, especially the inner workings of living things. Using color and dynamic compositions inspired by events happening inside of our bodies, art making allows me to visually explore our biological relationship with plants, animals, and each other. In my work, I strive to emulate and celebrate the energy and visceral qualities of our biotic existence and to encourage a sense of curiosity about these types of behind-the-scenes events within the viewer.

Gina Xu
School of Arts, Media and Engineering
Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts, Arizona State University

Audio for She Asked Me My Name and I Gave Her My Social Security Number; That’s How They Got My Spleen, 2019
Digital sound recording

This work attempts to capture the bustle of a body, using various morphed samples taken from the environment around us. The sounds show a contrast between the inside and the outside of the body in an abstract and playful way, as if the listener is on an amusement park ride that weaves in and out of a structure.

Xu’s work largely consists of music visualizers and general motion design, as well as creating loops for media installations and video jockeying. Within audio, she enjoys creating vaporwave and manipulating and glitching out samples for electronic music and sound design.

Monica Aissa Martinez
Two Studies – Nervous System and Lymphatic System, 2019
Mixed media on Mylar (Media: casein, gesso, graphite, gauche, Prisma pencil, micaceous iron oxide)

The body is like a landscape of intricate structure, complex and full of variety. It is an arrangement of cells that form organs that form systems. I find the orchestration rhythmic and poetic. As I go from shape to shape, work to work, I find myself searching deep within its nooks and crannies. Where is its source? Is there a narrative?

This 2-sided work is a study of the nervous system (on the front side) and the lymphatic system (on the back side). Interested in both the physical and the subtle body, I think about how these two energetic systems circulate through and support the physical body.

Technically I enjoy working on Mylar because of its smooth surface. It takes a variety of dry and wet media and I especially like what happens when I use both sides. The play of line, color, form, translucency and light are important elements in this composition.

Laura Brackney
School of Music
Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts, Arizona State University

Audio for The Nervous System and The Lymphatic System, 2019
Digital sound recording

This music responds to the play of color and light in Martinez’s work. Her drawings and Nelson’s poem inspired me to consider the small details and delicate sounds of these two biological systems. 

Laura Brackney is currently pursuing a doctorate of musical arts in composition at Arizona State University. She recently served as the co-creative director of the arts nonprofit COTFG in Austin, Texas, and completed a master of music in composition at Texas State University. She has created music for theatre, film, and bicycle installations. Her work has premiered at the Bullock Texas State History Museum, the Blanton Museum of Art, the 78th Anniversary of the University of Texas Kniker Carillon, the New Media Art and Sound Summit, the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium, the Look and Listen Festival by Grit Collaborative + Oh My Ears, and by the AURORA trio, Gamelan Lipi Awan, and Quince Ensemble.

Kelly Nelson
Signal
Poem accompanyingTwo Studies – Nervous System and Lymphatic System

Noises, plenty—
steady bass line of the heart, wheeze
and let go of the bellows, gasp
and trickle of your last meal
switchbacking your gut.
Yet when brain tells
hand to play the G above middle C,
when skin mentions
the stove is still hot,
it’s all nudge and nod, quiet
wink of the nervous system.
I want my messages heard.
At the intersection
of my left arm and rib
cage, place a herald with the voice
of Maya Angelou to recite the red
threads and bird wings that radiate
through me—Hear? She’s already begun.

Laura Spalding Best
Refracted Oasis, 2018
Oil on found objects

I have been studying and painting the urban landscape of the Southwest for many years now. Working with oil paint on metal and found objects, I have long viewed my groups of paintings as installations. In my work, I seek to analyze and quantify the complex infrastructure that makes our desert cities livable, while also appreciating the unexpected beauty that can be found in power lines and transformers. Through the visual metaphors of the oasis and the mirage, my paintings often reflect each other, distort, and even appear to melt from their surface. I start with the mirage as a melting point and blur the line between something which is a tantalizing promise on the horizon and something that we may always pursue but never actually reach. These depictions of the contemporary urban desert, featuring banal locations like highways, parking lots, and man-made waterfalls, explore the legacies of romanticism in the American West and tell stories of unfulfilled promises of paradise and the future effects of climate change.

Devin Arne 
School of Music and Arts, Media and Engineering
Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts, Arizona State University

Roadside Apparition, 2019
Digital sound recording

Roadside Apparition explores the iconic desert landscapes of Arizona through sound. Processed layers of electric guitar conjure memories of a forgotten time—of seemingly endless roads and the romanticized landscape of the American West. Field recordings and found-object percussion create a sense of space and mystery. Sonic mirages occur as seemingly solid sounds vaporize into clouds of echo and reverberation.

Hailing from New York State’s Hudson Valley, Devin Arne is a composer, producer, and guitarist. He has established a reputation as a versatile composer with a portfolio that spans electronic, jazz, film scores, and contemporary chamber music. Arne’s approach to music is polystylistic, drawing from both popular and experimental practices and combining acoustic and electronic soundworlds. Arne specializes in composition for media, both fixed and interactive.

Lara Plecas
Petite Alliance, 2019
Encaustic collage on panel

Lara Plecas has been a visual artist exhibiting work in the Valley since 2000. She is a part of the budding art community in downtown Phoenix that resides along Roosevelt Street and Grand Avenue. She was a member of the Eye Lounge artist-run collective from 2010–2013 and during this time was involved in group exhibitions in Israel and at the Mesa Arts Center. The Mesa Arts Center has since acquired her work for their permanent collection. Plecas’s work utilizes elements of folk art and textile patterns reimagined through maps, handmade paper, and old book pages. Her works are narrative and tell stories of nostalgia and family history, much like a quilter.

Laura Brackney
School of Music
Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts, Arizona State University

Audio for Petite Alliance, 2019
Digital sound recording

This music was inspired by Lara Plecas’s interlocking and constantly changing patterns. Fragments of song weave together and apart. 

Laura Brackney is currently pursuing a doctorate of musical arts in composition at Arizona State University. She recently served as the co-creative director of the arts nonprofit COTFG in Austin, Texas, and completed a master of music in composition at Texas State University. She has created music for theatre, film, and bicycle installations. Her work has premiered at the Bullock Texas State History Museum, the Blanton Museum of Art, the 78th Anniversary of the University of Texas Kniker Carillon, the New Media Art and Sound Summit, the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium, the Look and Listen Festival by Grit Collaborative + Oh My Ears, and by the AURORA trio, Gamelan Lipi Awan, and Quince Ensemble.

Cam DeCaussin
Or so I’m told but how would you fake it, 2017
Oil on panel

There is an urge to flirt with voyeurism. It is a profound dynamic that, as a society, we all, engage in to some degree. Whether done out of curiosity, concern, awareness, or pleasure, there is an intrinsic need to know. In our post-Hopperesque society, I find myself exploring neighborhoods in search of a glimpse into these foreign lives. Utilizing the low light of evening, each window depicts an intimate story. The perception of suburbia’s strain of isolation manifests itself into ambiguous narratives filled with a sense of melancholy—witnessing a world veiled with an idealistic domestic façade; all the while, an illuminated interior is overcome with depression, anxiety, and solitude.

A time of immense connectivity has come at a cost; social media has created an increased state of separation, nearly impossible escape—an addiction that only amplifies the stress, angst, and sadness of keeping up with the Joneses. It is in between these moments, albeit brief, when we can separate from distraction, when our overt awareness is lost in the silence. The locations may vary—whether remaining in a car after a long day, just before opening your front door, in the shower, or the moment you fall asleep—the result remains the same. We become honest in mind and body. We let our guard down, becoming self-reflective. We contemplate before the speed of reality, responsibilities, and distraction consume us once again.

Shomit Barua
Synthesis / School of Arts, Media and Engineering
Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts, Arizona State University

Mermaid Soup is a Bowl of Melted Ice Cream, 2019
Analog looped cassette tape and solid state tape player

An interwoven montage of found sounds and synthesis, Mermaid Soup is a distant memory, fuzzy and difficult to recall—a hazy hallucination of cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, a sweaty pitcher of sun tea, folding lawn chairs, and a wicker basket—an afternoon in stasis spread like a gingham blanket.

Shomit Barua is a multimedia artist who specializes in interdisciplinary performances and installations. He believes that artistic exploration of a subject is amplified—made “robust” and “thick”—through meaningful collaborations. His poetry is a contemporary expression of cognitive spirituality, which he fuses with sound art and visual projections. He collaborates with dancers, musicians, architects, and visual artists, and he teaches writing at Arizona State University.