HALF OPEN
2013
Video, 5.1 Sound
The Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie has the unique position of being an active prairie reclamation that overlays fields of decommissioned WWII munitions storage bunkers. The enclosed, highly reflective interiors of these bunkers create deeply saturated, lingering reverberations that diverge from the open acoustics of the surrounding prairie.
Half Open is a sound/video installation that investigates the threshold of interior/exterior space by vocally activating the distinct features of the Midewin landscape. The phenomenally reverberant interiors of the bunkers exist in stark acoustic contrast with the non-reflective, wide-open exterior terrain of the prairie. Vocalizations by a group of performers interact with multiple visible perspectives of the site, bridging the boundaries between inside and out, nature and culture, music and sound, and the heard and the seen. In this sound/video installation, the peripheries of these differences contrast, overlap, and dissolve, becoming the subject of a formal investigation that addresses the total site through the visible embodiment of acoustic transformation.