Observationhouse was built in a floodplain, and is capable of flotation.

The shape of the structure is borrowed from a shed built in the early 20th century by Alexander Graham Bell for his research station in Nova Scotia, Canada. Bell made use of his “tetrahedral structure” as a base for environmental sensing experiments and observation in the field. Here, observationhouse is: a field studio, workshop and visual anchor for my year-long residency; a site for artistic work that dovetails with the Brandywine Conservancy’s environmental stewardship activities (particularly source water protection); and a platform for experimentation with a range of environmental sensing technologies, including a water monitoring device built and installed in the River beside the house through a collaboration with Shannon Hicks, engineer at Stroud Water Research Center. Stroud continues to monitor river data, viewable here: http://tinyurl.com/gpwaxtb

To build the observationhouse, I collaborated with Tri-Lox, to reclaim white cedar and fir from a New York City water tower.

Field recordings are played on the half hour and the hour within the structure, mixed with live sound from the river.

Excerpted from the publication:

“When we first started working with Bea at the Sunview, the front window was filled with a tangle of plants, mostly overgrown spider plants and ivies, that over the course of the first winter had frozen, thawed, and froze again. Eventually they were hauled outside by an impatient film crew and never brought back (their pots still reside in the garden, sans plants). It always felt like a loss, though we get more light now, and Bea has brought in fake flowers and a couple of plastic potted plants which aren’t so bad. When Dylan started talking with Matej about a project to create an aquaponic growing structure as a sculpture in the Sunview’s window (and back yard), it was these first plants they had in mind. They had also wanted to build a garden in the Sunview’s back yard, but with the oil spill and all (you know just the largest oil spill in US history) and the toxic plumes, they had no desire to actually plant anything in the ground, fearin’ what it might bring up. They decided instead to build an indoor/outdoor mobile aquaponic sonic phonic hydroponic garden. Aquaponics is a viable system of growing plants alongside fish in a symbiotic circle of life/waste in which the fish poop is used to fertilize the plants and the plants give the fish a reason to live, which then cheers the Sunview up over the cold winter while providing fresh herbs and small vegetables to members and the public.”

stolon, n. (botany): a creeping horizontal plant stem or runner that takes root at points along its length to form new plants.

Stolon/Station is a low-frequency radio station transmitting from inside Hunter’s Point South, a post-natural wilderness zone, which was up until late 2016, the last undeveloped parcel of land on the East River in Long Island City.

The station relayed a soundscape of the post-natural into the adjacent waterfront park, and out onto the East River.  The radio program consisted of field recordings taken inside the wilderness zone, combined with commissioned pieces from sound artists, ecologists, and urban explorers.

The station broadcast a continuous, 24-hour program over four consecutive days – August 28, 29, 30, 31 in 2015 – and intermittently thereafter, on 91.9 FM.

Instructions (iPhone).

Instructions (Android).

“According to City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., the city does not have a complete record of where cellular antennas are in the city. In fact, they have no idea how many antennas there are in the city.” ~ Gothamist, 2010.

Fabric/Fragment of An Urban Wilderness is a sound work and an investigation of the built environment, produced by giving voice to the city’s thickly layered range of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) projected by cell phone base stations.

In 2012, I started the project, “Toward a North Brooklyn Wilderness Corridor,” to document endangered urban wilderness in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where I have lived off and on since 2002.  “Fabric/Fragment of An Urban Wilderness,” is made up of four tracks, each corresponding to a specific site within the 1.5 square-mile neighborhood, and runs for approximately 40 minutes.

Electromagnetic fields form an invisible backdrop to our daily lives, and offer an inaudible soundtrack to our technologized selves.  Emanating from all electronic devices – from the common fluorescent fixture, to traffic signal controls, plasma screens, or the towers beaming raw data to the cell phones in our pockets – the signals are invisible, the devices are easily overlooked, but the fields themselves are everywhere.  By giving voice to their presence in public space, we might define the limits of a type infrastructure, or of the city itself.

Excerpt: