David Wicks :: Works » landscape

Drawing Water

Wicks — Mon, 02 May 2011 19:06:04 +0000

Drawing Water is a constructed landscape shaped by the relationship between where water falls and where it’s consumed within the United States. It builds images to expose the reality that water is channeled, pumped, and siphoned to locations far from where it falls. Although the paths are imagined, Drawing Water is based on real data and it reveals a clear truth about water resources and use.

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.

Self-portrait by a wave

Wicks — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 07:25:12 +0000

I wanted to give the landscape some agency in its own representation. The final video image is distorted by the motion of the wave in which it was recorded.

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.

Study for a Continuous Landscape

Wicks — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:05:38 +0000

Study for a Continuous Landscape is a procedural animation that follows a group of travelers wandering over a field of barnacles. The image of barnacles is edited so that it can be repeated infinitely as the travelers move across it.

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

Watch in HD on vimeo.

Trace: Resonance Field

Wicks — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:31:31 +0000

Created in collaboration with Pete Hawkes, Trace is a series of ceramic plates installed in the desert that are struck according to past local seismic activity. Each plate repeats the recent history of movement at a site in the surrounding mountain ranges, transforming it into rhythmic percussion. The overall effect is something like a seismic gamelan, a subtle audible and visible trace of the activity that came before it.

Audio excerpt from Trace (wear headphones)

Trace work was installed in 29 Palms—just North of Joshua Tree—as part of the Dry Immersion III: Desert Projects exhibition. Process photos and video are available on flickr.

We used python to turn the seismic waveforms into data usable by an arduino microcontroller that drove the motors. Elaine Hu fabricated the ceramics.

The making and exhibition of Trace was supported by a grant from UCIRA.

Tamarisk

Wicks — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:14:11 +0000

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.

Tamarisk: Test Installation

Wicks — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:51:47 +0000

software, paper, concrete, salt.

Process photos on flickr.

Portable Forest

Wicks — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:47:40 +0000

Portable Forest is a jacket that plays bird songs and the sound of water. As you zip up the jacket, bird calls begin to echo around you. You start at a trailhead, a few birds nearby—just able to make out the sound of a nearby brook—and progress down a riverine path until reaching a waterfall when the jacket is fully zipped up.

Portable Forest is an attempt to create a portable natural space; one the wearer can raise around themselves wherever they are.

I gathered audio on a series of hikes in Southern California to set the tone for the walk. For the final tracks, I used bird sounds from ASU and a water sound from freesound.org.

Rebecca Fenton helped with photography and gave sewing advice. ITP provided information on making potentiometers using conductive thread.

This prototype jacket was made with Arduino. Small pockets of green fabric were sewn in to an existing jacket—one which I’ve taken many hikes through the woods in—to hold speakers that responded to the zipping and unzipping of the jacket.

Source code for controlling the embedded MP3 players from Arduino is available on github. Process photos can be seen in the flickr set.

Aggregation / Expansion I

Wicks — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 22:32:55 +0000

Working with students at Shanghai University, I created a series of urban installations from debris in abandoned neighborhoods around Shanghai. These installations were documented, and components of each were saved for use in a later gallery installation. A generative animation was projected onto the gallery installation, contributing an endlessly varying loop of the materials the installation was constructed from.

My main collaborators were Xue Li, Lyn Yuan, Yao Yao, Shi Shu Yi, and Xia Jia.