The Hottest Day on Earth: Media Art from Biosphere 1

Last weekend!

Artists tackle climate crisis and environmental justice in a show of eco-art installations curated by Benton C Bainbridge

Media Art by D-Fuse (London), Melissa A. Troutman + The Sound Serum (Erie), Matos (Bronx), iki nakagawa (Brooklyn) and KellyKillz (Erie)

also on view: installations by Nathaniel Hale Garnon + Michalina Wilińska, William Laziza, Data Wretch, and Eric "Ur Sullivision" Schefter

On view Fri 5-8 PM + Sat/Sun Noon-5 + by appointment

D-Fuse: Nine Earths Audio Description

is an environmental artwork contrasting ordinary lives and humanity’s excessive demands for the planet’s resources. An iteration of Nine Earths Immersive, Nine Earths Audio Description helps visually impaired people feel imagery and hear documentary footage and data graphics via the audio description of visual information. It is a positive, compassionate artwork, influenced by Rutger Bregman’s book Humankind: A Hopeful History, which makes the argument that it is realistic - as well as revolutionary - to assume that people are essentially good and that, together, we can build a better future.

Nine Earths has been developed in collaboration with researchers, scientists and filmmakers worldwide. Originally commissioned by the British Council to mark the UK hosting the UN climate change conference in Glasgow, the artwork is a dynamic piece that continues to evolve – adding different places, people and their stories as time goes on. The artwork travels internationally, bringing together local experiences with its global theme. Nine Earths is customized with workshops where individuals can contribute their citizen stories. Central to the piece are “citizen stories” of ordinary people describing their daily routines, hopes and fears.

Founded by neurodivergent artist Mike Faulkner in the mid-1990s, D-Fuse is a collective of audiovisual innovators working across a range of media art forms. Its creative output encompasses immersive art installations, live AV performances, VR, experimental film and animation. D-Fuse has collaborated on a wide range of high-profile commissions with international partners including Al Gore, the Eames Office, the British Council, Steve Reich, Beck, Hauschka, Scanner, University College London, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Immersive Media Lab/USC and Eyebeam. Exhibitions include COP26 (Glasgow), COP27 (Sharm El Sheikh), the British Film Institute (London), Prix Ars Electronica, Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Tribeca Film Festival (NYC) and Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco), Sonar D+ (Lisbon/Barcelona) and the Cannes Film Festival. An innovator of VJ culture in the 1990s, Mike Faulkner authored the world's first book on the form, VJ: Audiovisual Art and VJ Culture, which was published in 2007. Live performances include VJ-ing onstage throughout Beck's Guerro world tour.

Melissa A.Troutman + The Sound Serum: "You Call Me Lake Erie"

As a storyteller, advocate, and former teacher, Melissa Troutman understands the power of a question asked simply, at just the right moment. Right now is one of those moments. As humanity, society, and the planet face the consequences of a terrible fever, one of the symptoms of a grave yet curable illness, we must ask: What is the nature of our relationships to Nature and each other? Because really, it’s our relationships that determine our health, our wealth, and our happiness. The poem “You Call Me Lake Erie” that you hear in this piece came to Troutman while soaking in a bath, in a way not dissimilar to how the water came to the bathtub from Lake Erie – through a series of hidden pathways. In this piece, she traces both water and poem back to their source. 

This piece is an adaptation of the Emmy-nominated series Lake Erie, Our Kin, which Troutman wrote and co-produced/co-directed with Erie-based filmmaker John C. Lyons. Much of the footage in this adaptation was originally edited by Jesse James, another Erie-based filmmaker. The dancers featured are Erie’s own Jennifer Dennehy, Emmaline Devore, Maya Richards, Jenna Swartz, and Andona Zacks-Jordan. The series aired on WQLN PBS in April 2023.

The Sound Serum is the instrumental moniker for Erie-based composer and artist Anthony Carson. “Tonal Tonic 003” is the first official release of musical works intended to give the listener an aural space to connect with themselves through the subjective interplay of sound and mind.

In the short film “You Call Me Lake Erie,” the piece is used to create a fluctuating emotional undercurrent, to illustrate the beauty of the images of Lake Erie, its people, the impact of industry, and the relationship between each, and to remind the viewer of their place in the very real living body of the Lake and all of the beings who depend on the health of their shared ecosystem.

Matos: THE FUTURE WILL KILL YOU

Michael Matos is a multimedia artist whose work combines memory, mutation, and dysmorphia into a cacophony of color and sound. Analog video synthesis is mated with 3d models collapsing under the weight of their twisted polygons, reborn onto fabric to be be cobbled together into a hellish Lisa Frank utopia of psychedelic Cronenberg wet dreams. It is beauty pushed to perverse peaks. A celebration of aesthetic implosion. With a focus on quilted fabric pieces, the sequential arrow of time that pierces traditional video art is compressed to a singularity. Frozen yet kinetic. The work is a look into a claustrophobic world of glorious crystalized anxiety.

iki nakagawa: work environmental 

is a video installation featuring audio visual documentation of human’s conservation actions and of urban nature recorded at the Coney Island Creek, Lenapehoking, Brooklyn, NY, USA in 2023. Movements of people removing refuse is projected in conjunction with that of currents moving refuse. Movements of people planting seagrass is projected in conjunction with that of sands and grass. The work invites audience to witness and feel what it is like to be with those movements. Might this sensory experience elevate restorative acts of care for nature, wildlife and humans?

(Re) moving garbage / refuse

The left projection shows documentation of Kaiser Park Coastal Cleanup, conceived, organized and facilitated by the NYC Park Stewardship Program at Coney Island Creek, Lenapehoking, Brooklyn, NY, USA on August 14, 2023. During the cleanup, a total of 633 pounds of garbage was removed from the creek. The right projection shows garbage / refuse on the tidal area of the same location above on June 10, 2024.

Planting American Beachgrass (Ammophila breviligulata)

The left screen is an edit of the recording of Creek Care and Planting conceived, organized and facilitated by the NYC Park Stewardship Program at Coney Island Creek, Lenapehoking, Brooklyn, NY, USA on April 1st, 2023. During the planting, a total of 2100 grass were plugged. The right screen features documentation of sand (imported) and Ammophila breviligulata (from the nursery at Floyd Bennett Field and/or Greenbelt Native Plant Center) at the same location on June 10, 2024.

The site represented here is on Lenapehoking, colonized and named as Brooklyn, New York. The conservation actions represented are organized by NYC Parks Stewardship Program, runnning conservation events with more than 200,000 volunteers each year. The recordings shared are a fraction of what takes place in New York City. This iteration of work environmental was made for FEED in June 2024, and is an iteration of nakagawa's ongoing research project entitled movements for today, thoughts for tomorrow, a project to study, document, and seek understanding of people’s relationship to nature and wildlife as seen through their diverse efforts to clean, restore, care for, protect and build urban ecology. In 2021 iki began participating in stewardship activities organized by NYC Parks and recording the actions of other volunteers

KellyKillz: CONSUME THE MEDIA

is inspired by John Carpenter's 1988 horror action film "THEY LIVE" and Hal Hefner's "CONSUME" digital horror art collection. 

They are here, They are amongst us. The imposters are our politicians, celebrities, media, music, food, self-limiting beliefs, greed, money, sex, drugs, alcohol, pastors, teachers, and bankers—plaguing our society with harsh judgment, unfair living conditions, and delusions & lies. The audio compiles opposing sides: political leaders, celebrities, child activists—all the noise pollution incessantly invading our bodily labyrinths. This onslaught has been subconsciously programming us for generations—MK Ultra drinking the Kool-Aid. “Look around at the environment we live in. Carbon dioxide, fluorocarbons, and methane have increased since 1958. Earth is being acclimatized. They are turning our atmosphere into their atmosphere.” These “aliens'” actions slowly drain the life force of this planet and its human race. The truth will set you free, but at first, it will piss you off.

Sunken Gallery South:

The Chromaphone by William Laziza is a whimsical interactive instrument powered by the winds of chance. Made from materials scavenged from FEED basement, The Chromaphone is on display 24/7 in the State Street storefront window; to play with it and get a closer look, come during FEED gallery hours F 5-8 | S/S Noon-5.

Sunken Gallery North:

"ttęnt" (2024) video / sculpture / installation by Nathaniel Hale Garnon + Michalina Wilińska made from materials scavenged from FEED basement