Mar, Mar e Mar
Fernanda D'Agostino | Ray Theater
Mar, Mar e Mar is inspired by the poetry of Eugénio Andrade, whose mysterious and tender ruminations on the sea express what often goes unconsidered in the current age of ecological loss. Working with the Ocean Observatory Institute and a host of creative performers, Mar, Mar e Mar was developed as an immersive video and sound installation that brings to life the spirit of Andrade’s writing. Mar, Mar e Mar uses creative coding to combine scientific imaging, performance and sound, in scenes that shift based on randomization programming. Unexpected combinations of imagery and sound emerge, with no beginning or end.
Performers were asked to embody the prompt, “speak for the sea using only your bodies, hands and face.” D’Agostino presents the performers’ considered responses in tandem with the mathematical processes of fluid dynamics and the biological processes of marine life.
The installation was additionally inspired by OSU faculty Virginia Weis’ reflections on the role of symbiosis in nature and the realization that we are not separate from the rest of the living world.
Hear the thoughts of D'Agostino's scientific researcher interviewees here. Sound mixing by Crystal Quartez.
Image details of Mar, Mar e Mar
Artists
Fernanda D’Agostino with Crystal Quartez, Sophia Wright Emigh (Sound) and Sophia Wright Emigh, Lisa Kusanagi, Jaleesa M Johnston, ProLab Dance, Min Yoon (Performance) and the generous participation of the scientists of the Ocean Observatory Institute.
About the artists
Fernanda D’Agostino’s internationally exhibited installations incorporate sculpture, architecture, interactive video, projection mapping and sound in novel ways. Her work engages themes of movement and growth as catalyzed by phenomena of the natural world, alchemical transformation, complex networks, and human engagement with non-human communities. Having begun her career in the 1980s as a performance artist with a focus on body work, the body and how it engages with space and objects informs all her work. Although no longer performing every installation includes a performance or other live event and often the making of the work involves performative acts by herself and/or collaborators. The connecting thread in all her work is placing viewers at the center of an all-encompassing interactive environment, in this sense the viewer becomes the performer in a “prepared environment.”
D'Agostino is the recipient of a Bronson Fellowship, Flintridge Foundation Fellowship, and Project Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Precipice Fund and Ford Family Foundation. She’s been a visiting artist at the American Academy of Rome and ArtPark, New York. Notable exhibitions include Festival de la Imagin, Columbia, the SoundWave Biennial San Francisco, 1A Space Hong Kong, CyberFest St Petersburg, Video Guerillha, Sao Paolo, Suyama Space, Western States Biennial, Brooklyn Art Museum, Fuori Festival, Italy, The Virtual Venice Biennale, The Map is not the Territory PAM, and PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival.
Crystal Quartez is a sound artist and creative technologist based out of Portland, Oregon. Their work focuses on redirecting modern technology toward decolonial practices and sacred relationality. Under their perfomance moniker Crystal Quartez, they transform field recordings, use synthesis, audio programming, data sonification, and 3D sound spatialization to produce windows into shared networks of reality, often separated by borders, time, and perception. Their practice has recently involved biodata collection from plants and to expand listening beyond the human. Their art has been shown at NIME, La MaMa NYC, PNCA, Disjecta, PICA, Naval (LA), On the Boards (Seattle), Mizaji Gallery, Southern Exposure (SF) and more.
Sophia Wright Emigh (she/they) is an interdisciplinary, queer mother artist and filmmaker working in performance, installation, and somatic ecology. Through camera, body, and sound, she transmits the movement of life around the ineffable, via generative sanctuary-making in the cracks of culture.