Drawing Water plays a bit upon the 19th-century theory that “rain follows the plow.” At the time of its inception, that theory promoted Westward expansion, under the belief that plowing fields encouraged cloud formation and rainfall. As long as people plowed fields, they believed, water would come to them. Although we recognize climatological reality isn’t influenced by our farming (in the manner hoped), Americans still live with an illusion of resource availability following need.

The project is realized as a series of high-resolution print images as well as an interactive, animated map. Each print displays the cumulative rainfall across the United States for a season, starting with Spring 2010 and continuing through Winter 2011. Each line in a print corresponds to a daily rainfall measurement. The length of the line and its initial placement are determined by the amount of rainfall measured and where it fell. The final placement and color of each line are determined by the influence of urban water consumers. The more water a city uses, the stronger its pull on the rainfall. As rainfall is pulled farther from where it fell, it changes color from blue to black.

Winter 2011

Midwest, Winter 2011

Southwest, Winter 2011

Installation video of Drawing Water in the New Wight Gallery at UCLA.

Drawing Water uses water consumption data provided by the USGS and rainfall data provided by NOAA/NWS. The data is downloaded and parsed with a series of python scripts.

I generated the prints using software written on top of the Cinder framework. I also built the interactive mapping application and controller on top of Cinder.

Drawing Water was shown as part of the UCLA D|MA thesis exhibition: Tell them nothing of the things I thought about and created while I was sleeping.

A recording device comprised of a video camera and an accelerometer measures both the appearance and the motion of a wave. After recording, the accelerometer data is used to distort the video data according to the forces within the wave at that point in time.

The recording device was taken into the ocean several times and carried back to shore by the swells. Pete Hawkes was generous enough to carry the device into the ocean for the initial trials.

The program creates a series of lines, and then creates a series of deformers that warp them using gravity-like forces. After completing the static version, I produced a generative animation using a modified version of the software.

The work exists as a custom software projection, written in c++ using the cinder framework.

Watch in HD on vimeo.

Each print shows the distance between people and their desires, the paths they would follow to reach them, and the relative direction to their desired places. They present a macro view of travel within common narratives of desire.

I used the cairo 2d library within cinder to sort and draw the storylines. To parse the data, I used a few python scripts. Printed on Hahnemühle Bamboo paper.

Installed on the foundation of a demolished jackrabbit hut in 29 Palms, the field of miniature salt-bearing trees is about self-defeating strategies of territorial dominance. Tamarisk was constructed through a combination of generative processes. The miniature trees are cut from paper, with unique forms determined algorithmically. The algorithmic process was designed to yield forms that resembled those of the desert smoke tree. They were then soaked in saline solution before being attached to a cracked concrete plane, itself encrusted in salt. The trees have a subtle salt coating that references the salt-producing Tamarisk species.

I showed Tamarisk as part of the Dry Immersion III: Desert Projects exhibition in 29 Palms.