Head Waters at the Headwaters
The United States of America is just under ten million square kilometers in surface area. Its most conterminous landmass is a topology of creases and folds, mountains and ridges, chasms and embankments. These create, among other divides, hydrological continental separations, sloped divisions for watersheds that flow into either the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River or the Missouri-Mississippi complex. These great, tectonic gutters cascade erosive, mineralized waters into the Atlantic Ocean or (...)
Listening to the Mississippi
Listening to the Mississippi is an iterative project that has unfolded since 2013 and currently manifests as a sound composition and traveling listening station. Using underwater recordings gathered in 2015 by artists Monica Haller and Sebastian Müllauer that span the river from the headwaters to the Gulf, listeners are invited to orient themselves to the river through their sense of sound, rather than by sight alone. (...)
The Shape of a River: Mississippi
Students analyzed case studies on the Mississippi, developed their own questions, exchanged with the case study authors, and designed new maps of relationships. The work considered questions such as, what approaches and methods were used for these case studies? Which relationships between human and non-human actors could be observed? What socio-political relationships become visible through the river? Who is being overlooked? What does this have to do with us here? And: how can we make these rel (...)