The neon light references the river’s former industrial uses as a source of power. During the Industrial Revolution, the reign was a seat of power and hundreds mills were activated by the Brandywine (including the one you’re standing in now). The neon was fabricated with the specific constraint to use the amount power that the River could generate using an inexpensive consumer grade hydroelectric generator.

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Regional waterways once dictated where and how cities came to be built, and acted as a connective fabric between distant regions and peoples. They powered industry and provided residents with food and drinking water while serving the public’s needs for both transportation and recreation. My work invites the public to interact directly with their local rivers and streams, and to question the role of these waterways in contemporary American life as a means to thinking about larger ecological topics. The Brandywine flows into the Delaware and rejoins the Atlantic in the Chesapeake Bay, and in a sense, all waters are connected.  The sort of work that the Brandywine Conservancy is doing on the Brandywine River contributes not only to clean drinking water for neighboring cities, but to cleaner Oceans.

If rivers are no longer harnessed to generate power, my work also asks: how might these rivers, along with other energy generating technologies, one day be harnessed again?

Click here for the accompanying publication, KiteScores, released through the Socrates site.