I’m fascinated by what’s involved in this –  drought, temperature, population, investment, glaciers and polar ice caps, etc.

The distribution of water throughout the state is a function of demand, political influence, and supply, and the complexities of its sociological dynamics further complicate matters and re-shape formal infrastructure.

Opening Reception: Friday, March 2 : 6-9 pm

Other exhibiting artists include:  Natalie Andrew, Ryan Boatright, Sophia Brueckner, Alicia Eggert, Juan Escudero, Joseph Farbrook, Antony Flackett, Ben K. Foley, Dave Gordon, Rob Gonsalves, Lori Hepner, Wei-Ming Ho, Faith Holland, Annette Isham, Arnold Koroshegyi, Victor Liu, Andrew Neumann, Bob Kephart, Jean-Michel Rolland, Mark Stock, Wayne Strattman, and Topp & Dubio.

—–

Axiom Gallery address and hours:

141 Green Street (The Green St. T-stop on the Orange Line)
Jamaica Plain, MA

Wed 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Thurs 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Fri 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Sat 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
and by appointment

Had I exhaled too much over the past month, left without enough oxygen to remember those resonant spaces in the past that I used be nostalgic for? As I walked down the cold, dark, damp street towards the bridge leading to the Arctic Cathedral, I wasn’t holding on to anything, having crossed a boundary, and beyond the grasp of any conclusions I had methodically composed before this vacation in Norway. Perhaps this boundary was crossed earlier, in Oslo, or during the voyage. I remember looking ahead, down the street and seeing no one. Sometimes, I would see someone in an illuminating store (e.g. the apoteks). Tromsø is known for its nightlife, but that’s not the nightlife I’m referring to.

Tromsø Bridge was the longest cantilever bridge I had ever crossed at night. There wasn’t room on either side for more than two people to pass, and the outer railing was high enough to prevent people from accidentally falling off. I passed at least two people going the opposite direction during each crossing. On the return trip back to my hotel, looking off towards what seemed to be the south, I witnessed the twinkling tips of planes descending through the clear night. I couldn’t see the lights of the airport, however, since it was situated on the opposite side of a mountain.

“Arctic Water Column” (2011)

“Three Tahitians at the Boundary to the Polar Eternities” (2011)

Photo Gallery – Arctic Circle Residency

Other exhibiting artists include:  John Craig Freeman, Dyllan Nguyen, Ann Torke, Jane Prophet, Miriam Dym, EcoArtTech, and Richard Bertman

—–

Harbor Art Gallery address and hours:
Monday – Thursday: 12:00 – 7:00 P.M.Friday: 12:00 – 4:00 P.M.
Harbor Art Gallery, c/o Meredith Hoy or Kevin Benisvy
McCormack Building
University of Massachusetts, Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd. Boston, MA 02125

Other exhibiting artists include:  John Craig Freeman, Dyllan Nguyen, Ann Torke, Jane Prophet, Miriam Dym, EcoArtTech, and Richard Bertman

—–

Harbor Art Gallery address and hours:
Monday – Thursday: 12:00 – 7:00 P.M.Friday: 12:00 – 4:00 P.M.
Harbor Art Gallery, c/o Meredith Hoy or Kevin Benisvy
McCormack Building
University of Massachusetts, Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd.Boston, MA 02125

Greetings friends,

The Arctic Circle Residency will begin in roughly two weeks. I would like to sincerely thank all of my current supporters (see below), and provide a final update before I leave.

My trip will begin Sept 26, and include a week of traveling to Longyearbyen and prep work, two weeks of sailing and exploring, and then about a week of compiling observations and wandering around southern Norway, before returning to the US on Oct 26. Our cruise will consist of 1-2 days of onshore work for each 1-2 days of sailing around the western and northern regions of the Svalbard archipelago. Since September is actually the month of minimum sea ice in the Arctic, sailing conditions should be ideal and allow for maximum flexibility in our itinerary.

To summarize my current artist statement regarding the expedition, I’ll collect 3D scans of ice chunks and surfaces, record sounds of electrical waves propagating through the atmosphere from the tropics, talk with other members of the expedition about why they are exploring the archipelago, study the geopolitical forces affecting the Svalbard region, and take photographs. We will not have internet access during the cruise, so I won’t be blogging, unfortunately.

To donate in exchange for “rewards”, visit:  http://www.benbray.com/payment.php . The underwater ROV I had mentioned previously will not be making the trip, so I’ll have to substitute some other interesting artifact for underwater video as part of the reward set.  If you have any suggestions, please send me an email, or include a note in the process of making a donation.

Special thanks to:
Aimee Ash
Andreas Randow
Dan Nissenbaum
David Bryant
Don Bray
Georgina Lewis
John Pound
Kitt Hodsden
Marcela Rodriguez
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Michael Soroka
Nancy Adams
Yuka Otani

This still leaves about $7K that I’ll need to cover via additional grants, donations, and personal savings. The Kickstarter.com project I began two weeks ago is still very much open for new contributions, so please spread the word, and help me close the gap.

I have been awarded the opportunity to participate as an artist and scientist in The Arctic Circle Residency, Sept 29 – Oct 16, 2011, and am seeking financial support. This is an annual expeditionary residency aboard an ice-class sailing ship, in the western and northern regions of the Svalbard archipelago. The program allows a small group of artists and scientists to pursue personal projects in a collaborative environment encountered by very few.

Svalbard is part of a changing boundary, and transitioning from being impassible, unnavigable, and dimensionless to becoming a new frontier of commerce and tropical influence. In the context of Herman Melville’s writing, it is an environment transitioning from beyond the infinite “Polar Eternities” to becoming a finite part of “Tahiti”, where false pleasure could be sought, as opposed to harsh truth.

My most recent work, “Expanding Tahiti” (2011), is comprised of essays and sculpture confronting “boundaries” to human proliferation, between land/ocean, tropical/Arctic regions, and finite/infinite. A realization of a personal trajectory towards the northern coasts led to questioning about what attracts humans to such locations, what they represent, and what’s happening to these environments as a result of human activity. “Expanding Tahiti” is the first work drawn from this current project, and involves projection of experimental cartography onto a 300-lb translucent ice block.

The first part of the project for which I am requesting support involves observation of the Svalbard archipelago using a diverse set of tools. I’ll bring a small remotely-operated underwater vehicle (ROV) to explore around and below the sea ice and collect biological and biochemical data, IR video, photos, sound and 3D scans of surfaces. This “amphibious” ROV will alternately be deployed out of the water to collect 3D scans of sea ice chunks, video and sound.

Scans, video, photos, and sound recordings will be utilized in a variety of configurations during and primarily after the trip. During the trip, scans may be used by a colleague for the printing of replicas using a 3D printer and Pykrete. I will use this information to make glass castings of surfaces and forms, as stand-alone works and to serve as video projection surfaces for experimental cartographic maps of “boundaries”, some as minute as a few centimeters, and others as expansive as the length of the voyage. I expect that the characteristics of these maps, along with everything else, will be highly influenced by the other expedition members’ experiences. Why are they there? For what? A considerable amount of data and observations have already been collected and are readily available to answer these questions, but I wish to collect my own within the context of an environment I desire to explore, for reasons that I don’t yet fully understand..

DONATE

As of June 12, 2011, I am seeking $5600 to cover the participation fee, airfare, and equipment.  The total project cost is $8300, and I have raised $2700 via grants, donations, and glass sales.

To donate using a credit card, in exchange for rewards :
Amazon Payments – W. Benjamin Bray

To contribute a tax-deductible donation, in exchange for rewards :
The host organization for this residency (The Farm, Inc.) is a registered 501c3 non-profit, and will process tax-deductible donations over $150.  Please send a check or money order (made out to “The Farm, Inc.”), with your full contact information and reward choice (see above), to:

W. Benjamin Bray
44 Highland Rd., #1
Somerville, MA 02144
617-633-1372
wbbrayart@gmail.com

For more information about tax-deductible donations for this residency through The Farm, click here (PDF).

~

Listen to “Arctic Inspiration” , a Studio360 broadcast by 2009 participant Matt Holzman.

photo credit: Janet Biggs

Go to portfolio…

Worrying about the little block melting too fast…

Worrying about the big block becoming unstable, breaking stuff, flooding my apartment or the gallery, or injuring a gallery visitor…

Being driven insane by the drip, but sad to hear it silenced.  We want the Polar Eternities to die quietly…

Being sad about all of the EPS I’ve used, sad when some of it fell into the melt….

I was going to need large (32″ x 15″ x 7″), translucent ice slabs to project imagery onto. So, I set-up a table in the backyard, amidst the coldest Boston winter I had ever experienced, and lined a strong cardboard box w/ plastic to hold the water.  I tried a few powders to make it cloudy (incl. baking soda and powdered milk), before simply letting plain water freeze.  Eventually, what was left of the milky concoction froze-up whatever cracks existed in the box, and I had a working ice farm. Over the many days that I grew slabs, I covered the box with a tarp to prevent weekly nor’easters from smothering it. I eventually figured-out that cloudy ice is made by rapidly freezing several thin layers, and occasional cracking created beautiful bubble patterns.

From Moby Dick…

“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!

Look not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy hand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first hint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. Tomorrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp—all others but liars!

Nevertheless the sun hides not Virginia’s Dismal Swamp, nor Rome’s accursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true—not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. ‘All is vanity.’ ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of operas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils all of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais as passing wise, and therefore jolly; not that man is fitted to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon.

But even Solomon, he says, ‘the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain’ (I.E., even while living) ‘in the congregation of the dead.’ Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.”

Perhaps “Tahiti” is the embodiment of what we lust (e.g. Melville’s “Tahiti”, and the “Tahiti” of Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou, and Laurie Anderson), a false illusion, while the ocean is a vast embodiment of the harsh truth in life, and the frozen poles are the infinite regions where mankind cannot extend nor proliferate, where time does not exist for mankind.

The human race has been working to melt polar eternities since we began and since we discovered fire.  Ice is the boundary between mankind and infinity.  The further away we push the polar eternities, the more we can expand and proliferate, in hope of reaching Tahiti.  We expand into areas once covered by ice because we can: ice is water, and water supports life.

We gaze at the boundaries between land and ocean, the tropics and the poles, light and dark, and Earth and space.

Somewhere on the Moon, there is a high ridgeline hundreds of miles long, beyond which everything is in a shadow lit only by stars millions of light-years away. Can you imagine climbing to the top of this ridge, with your back to the setting sun as you pass into the infinite darkness of the Moon’s shadow?

At the boundary, facing the truth of the infinite, to which I am truly connected.  That which understands through non-syntactical thought. Lit directly by a high-latitude sun, covered by shallow lakes, stretching from the edge of humanity to the edge of the earth.

At the boundary, I sense a resolve.  Death looms less as and ‘end’. It’s like I’ve walked a thousand miles north to find where a singular individual resolves themselves, extinguishing all sirens for a free-floating bandit.

I have an affinity for high latitudes and oceanic boundaries – the boundary to the edge, as if that’s where all of humanity resolves itself, simply by addressing its limits.

From Moby Dick…

“When I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks, jaws, ribs, and vertebrae, all characterized by partial resemblances to the existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on the other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical Leviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to that wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for time began with man. Here Saturn’s grey chaos rolls over me, and I obtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when wedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and in all the 25,000 miles of this world’s circumference, not an inhabitable hand’s breadth of land was visible. “

“There can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens! look down here.”

Perhaps there is truth to this polar-coastal trajectory, to be found at the boundaries we find the most formidable.

“He found truth in orbit, not down below in the streets of Calcutta or above in the monotonous black void.  He was positioned in the cosmic arena, on the boundary between the conscious reality and the infinite subconscious.”

—

Infinite Environments

At 9:15p, I found myself at the Massachusetts coast amidst a blustery November, under a tumultuous sky.  Was I drawn to this boundary because of the ocean? Where there is water, there is hope, and life. Its cold, salty flow is a baptism through the pores, through the vessels, water in air merging with our watery selves, pausing our hysteria. Are we drawn to salty food as a pacifier?

From Moby Dick…

“The three mastheads are kept manned from sunrise to sunset; the seamen taking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other every two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly pleasant the masthead; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is delightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner — for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.”

Later that evening, as I watched video of the crew of Apollo 15 collecting rocks near Hadley rille, and the lunar dust being sifted through their gloves and returning to the surface for eternal solitude, I could feel my body exploding from the force of an environment who’s time scale for change is greater than the earth’s by orders of magnitude. Our bodies live in a system of change tied to minute scales of time, on a molecular spatial scale. In contrast, the Moon is a relatively infinite environment, completely devoid of biological events at any scale.

From Moby Dick…

“But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through — It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale — It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements — It’s a blasted heath — It’s a Hyperborean winter scene — It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time.”

The second night…

We had already gone through a scrub the previous night after communing in the cold early morning for more than four hours. Given all of the circumstances that I learned had to fall in place for an ISS shuttle mission to happen, this endeavour entered the realm of absurdity.

So, in setting out for Kennedy the second night in a row, my expectations for seeing anything spectacular seemed almost discontinuously low. Everything that seemed welcoming the first night gave me the cold shoulder on the second. The air seemed colder, the ground seemed damper, the other people seemed ambivalent towards not only the prospects for launch, but also the program’s future. The feeling in the air was that it’s time to move on to a NASA-less world.

Every reaction was easily composed from a familiar emotional palette: ambivalence toward rationality and hope, retreat from discomfort, and admitting fatigue

About two hours into the second night, the emcee for the night’s festivities announced that in contrast to the previous night, that night’s weather situation was less dynamic, and the thick ceiling that smothered us the night before was breaking to the east and moving towards Kennedy. That was undeniably good news, but we had no reason to believe yet that we would see the space shuttle launch.

At about an hour before launch, the sky cleared completely, and the international emergency landing sites reported ‘green‘.

At about 30 minutes before launch, we realized we were going to see a shuttle launch. People started to come out of their cars and find a spot to watch.

At about five minutes before launch, our pre-existing emotional palette began to fail in the glare of the reality that the shuttle is about to launch. There was a little bit of confusion over what to think and do.

At thirty seconds before launch, we felt completely inadequate and crazed.

And then the countdown started. I felt this weird painful heat swell-up inside, and experienced a shock of anticipating something awesome that I was completely unprepared for. I had had dreams on numerous occasions over the past decade of the ten seconds before witnessing a distant nuclear explosion, and this may have hit upon that. The ignition certainly resembled the horrific growth seen in my nightmares. Oh my God. But as it rose, this shock was immediately replaced by awe of a spiritual vision, the visualization of Greek myth. A flame was audaciously rising through the cloud-filled sky in hopes of reaching the Heavens, and we cheered it. The higher it went, the more was at stake.

And when it reached a point where it had left us behind, we said goodbye and good luck. I realized that the light in the sky wasn’t going to land somewhere else – it was going to keep ascending, for a long time. And it was going to orbit the Earth.

Is human life unnatural?

Like many other life forms, we are aware of our influence within the grande scheme of things. Guilt and insecurity causes us to feel bad and correct our behavior when we negatively affect other life directly or indirectly.

When we separate life into humanity and nature, though, we define nature as all Earth processes excluding humanity, for the purpose of understanding the effects we have on them. But we are as “natural” a process to Earth as any other that has, or will occur.

When we differentiate humanity and nature, it’s as if we are declaring that humans were applied to Earth by an extraterrestrial process, and that we are only guests.

Pg. 702, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages (7th ed.) :

“The contradiction between the formal villa and informal gardens was apparently not at once felt; for one thing, in the early eighteenth century the meaning of “nature” had not been agreed upon; was it, in the classical sense, a regularity of proportion, or, in the newer sense, the irregularity of growing things with their wildness and accidents – in a word, their picturesque or even their primitiveness? In the end it would be decided that all historical styles are “natural”, since they evolved historically from the artistic instincts of peoples, who are after all part of nature.”