Description

Drift is a series of site-specific installations in which I translate water-quality data from rivers into music using a small boat that floats down a river. I travel to a river, build a makeshift vessel from improvised materials, and equip it with water-quality sensors. I then launch it while it transmits live data to a laptop that generates music from the incoming data.

Onboard are an ultrasonic distance sensor, a temperature probe, a turbidity sensor, and more. They stream live data over long-range radio to a receiving station on shore, where the readings are mapped into music. The transmission range can be up to 1 km (~1/2 mile).

Unlike most water-quality monitoring from fixed points, Drift‘s sensors move with the water. The readings change as fast as the river does: colder near groundwater sources, murkier past an algae bloom, higher oxygen levels in rapids. It’s a portrait composed by the river’s own currents rather than human intention.

I build the boat from scavenged and inexpensive materials, such as driftwood, garbage, and pool noodles. Making the vessel from inexpensive materials emphasizes that meaningful data can be produced from the most mundane materials.

The performance ends when the boat drifts out of radio range, gets stuck, or, in rare cases, capsizes. Each performance is unique. Every river has its own character, and even the same river carries the boat differently from one launch to the next.

I also make field recordings at each site, capturing sounds such as flowing water with an underwater microphone, bird calls, and percussive hits from sticks and logs. I use these recordings as the source material for digital instruments and samples that get played by the live sensor data, creating a sense of place unique to each river.