“Channels (#1 Pittsburgh/Los Angeles)” is a technical cover-song to artist and composer Maryanne Amacher‘s City Links series, adapted for a high-speed interconnected world of streaming, liveness, and hybridity. Professor Geneva Skeen‘s project, similar to Amacher’s original, brings together live hi-fidelity audio from multiple sites into a new situation. Here, the sites happen to be multiple water channels amidst constructed industrial infrastructure—the Los Angeles, Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers. The project is on view October 18-20 at Human Resources in Los Angeles.
The sounds from remote spots along these bodies of water coalesce at the separate, third site of Human Resources. Using two portable A/V stations consisting of high-speed mobile wifi hotspots, solar paneled power–banks, condenser mics linked to mobile camera phones, and audio software, the resonant concrete architecture at HR becomes a hub and amplifier for ongoing signal receipt—a live mix for place, perception, and waters to recombine in presence and present-time.
Photo: Christopher Wormald