Listening Post
2008
Listening Post combines an audio recording, emitted via a parabolic speaker that hangs over top of a sculptural/architectural industrial scaffold, which the viewer climbs up in order to better hear the audio. The scaffold is 24 feet high, and as such the viewer experiences a distinctly different spatial orientation than if they remained on the ground.
The audio is a recording of the artist reciting A Definition of Evolution, a Buckminster Fuller poem from 1974, inside a geodesic dome. This poem laments the difficulty of implementing visionary or ‘progressive’ ideas into mainstream culture, a dilemma he links directly to contemporary engagements with knowledge and learning.This particular geodesic dome is a defunct West German spy station that, due to it’s hard shell and concrete floor, creates a heavily distorting ambient reverberation.
This project combines the historical context of this specific geodesic dome, its physical properties, the content of the poem and the physical experience of climbing up the precarious structure to create a subjectively experiential artwork.
2008
Listening Post combines an audio recording, emitted via a parabolic speaker that hangs over top of a sculptural/architectural industrial scaffold, which the viewer climbs up in order to better hear the audio. The scaffold is 24 feet high, and as such the viewer experiences a distinctly different spatial orientation than if they remained on the ground.
The audio is a recording of the artist reciting A Definition of Evolution, a Buckminster Fuller poem from 1974, inside a geodesic dome. This poem laments the difficulty of implementing visionary or ‘progressive’ ideas into mainstream culture, a dilemma he links directly to contemporary engagements with knowledge and learning.This particular geodesic dome is a defunct West German spy station that, due to it’s hard shell and concrete floor, creates a heavily distorting ambient reverberation.
This project combines the historical context of this specific geodesic dome, its physical properties, the content of the poem and the physical experience of climbing up the precarious structure to create a subjectively experiential artwork.
Aluminum scaffold, parabolic speaker, sound recording
24' x 16' x 17'
Aluminum scaffold, parabolic speaker, sound recording
24' x 16' x 17'
HOLLY WARD