Echolocation

The nightly sounds of party boats traversing the bay beyond my bedroom window led to Echolocation. These sounds, fragments of popular songs bouncing off different points on the water, transmit from the vastness of the night, over the water and through my small window. In the darkness, wisps of familiar greatest hits of decades past are so ripe with nostalgia that they seem tangible. I imagine I could grasp them, but darkness disembodies me. I could be inside or outside in that moment, of the present or the past. I could be physical or the song fragment could be the physical—I’m not sure which. The boat’s rhythmic passage to and fro across the water reminds me of the quality of memory as embodied emotion rather than an event that can be put into words.

My work has often positioned itself in what liminal spaces can be found between material and spiritual existence. Echolocation tries to convey the confluence of darkness, sound, and memory that both pin me to and release me from place and time. Its vertical format describes the long view down from my attic bedroom window to where the boisterous party boat is absorbed by an apparent infinite nighttime blackness of sea and sky. The long view and waves below are reconstructed with ink printed on tissue paper. The boat is made of bronze. The visual interplay of weightless paper and heavy bronze echoes the duality between the sounds and consciousness of a present, material existence and the heightened interior sensation of memory.