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Fragment Loops - BOXO Projects. 2022.
 
 

Fragment Loops is a body of work created while artist in residence at BOXO Projects in Joshua Tree, CA.

Fragment Loops is a series of portraits of fragmentation in process. The work takes place in Joshua Tree National Park, unceded territory of the Cahuilla, the Chemehuevi, the Serrano.

Each loop stems from low frequency field recordings generated at the Silver Bell and El Dorado mines in the Hexie Mountains in Joshua Tree National Park. Both of these mines were in operation until the late 1950’s - extracting gold, lead, and copper ore. These low frequency recordings become the modulation source for an array of eurorack synthesizers and effects. Each loop runs for about 4 seconds, and repeats infinitely.

The piece exists as four cassette tape loops, each generating a moment in a larger theme of the colonial process of fragmentation - or simply taking what is whole and systematically and violently eroding away continuity until left with fragments. The work is focused on the legacies of ore mining, where a vein of material is forcefully extracted and pulverized before processed and entered into commerce. The analogy connected here is to the development of National Parks in the US, which similarly fragments and pushes place into commerce. Removing the people, in an attempt at idealized preserved nature.

Fragment I - Perpetual formation, the identity is process. Time-bases relationships are destroyed.

Fragment II - Erosion of collectivity occurs, shattering into singularities.

Fragment III - Displacement and removal, Preservation of imposed identity

Fragment IV - Collectivity re-emerges, quantum state of potential

Songs of Tempestuous Rising and Falling. 2021.
 
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MFA Thesis exhibition at Ellsworth Gallery in Santa Fe, NM. This marks the completion of my three year Art & Ecology MFA program at the University of New Mexico.

Songs of Tempestuous Rising and Falling is an embodiment of the monsters that we live among that have shaped our landscapes. It is a meditation on relationships to place, to violence, to harmony, and disharmony. Through experimental music composition and performative installation, Songs of Tempestuous Rising and Falling meditates on the resonating eco-violence of place. Focusing on legacies of extractive violence on the Navajo Nation, this work gives space to hear and feel what the acoustic world is speaking. Songs of Tempestuous Rising and Falling brings into conversation the magnitude and influence of the audible world, in its fragility, vulnerability, resistance, adaptation, and transformation. In exploring existing resonance of place as well as resonance imposed, this work offers moments to reflect on the consequence of technological and extractive projects. This exhibition of work by Dylan McLaughlin provides a space of reverence and reflection. A translation of phenomena we can experience directly.

There Must Be Other Names for the River - UNM Art Museum Virtual. 2021.
 
 

There Must Be Other Names For The River is a composition for singers who embody river flow data at six points along what we call the Rio Grande. The exhibition features a web-based sound installation and virtual community space titled “Tributaries,” where viewers can contribute their voice to the project. The piece engages our relationship with this source of life in this region, and in a time of physical distancing, acknowledges that the river is also a way we are connected with neighbors and ecosystems, seen and unseen. 

In 2020, through stretches of Albuquerque and elsewhere, the river was shallow and skinny, if not disappearing altogether for miles and miles. Hydrologists say it could be dry this year from north of Bernalillo through Albuquerque. These miles of empty riverbed are new and alarming. Water agencies in New Mexico are warning farmers not to plant crops in 2021, since there may not be water to maintain them. 

Human-caused climate change over the last few decades—the blink of an eye in the river’s ancient timeline—is one culprit. Another is human interference with its flows, the damming and trading and control of water, a resource that’s become more valuable than gold.

Dylan McLaughlinComment
Settlement. 2020.

Excited to be participating in this project coming up in summer 2020!

Settlement is a radical Indigenous-led performative encampment in which artist Cannupa Hanska Luger has invited over 27 Indigenous artists from North America to occupy Pounds House in Plymouth UK’s Central Park for four weeks of engagement, July 6-August 2, 2020 during Mayflower 400, a quadricentennial multi-national commemoration of the Mayflower voyage.

Dylan McLaughlinComment
Overnight Dreamform. 2020.

Saturday 4 January from 10 p.m.- 6 a.m. : Live for a sleeping audience, it’s Overnight Dreamform. On Saturday, Jan. 4, 2020, Marisa Demarco launched an all-night live performance . Local experimentalists played from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Listeners tuned in to KUNM on radio or online and slept through the show. In the morning, they left a voice message about their dreams to be incorporated into next year’s Overnight Dreamform. To create a feedback loop of dreams.

Performers: Tahnee Udero, Carlos Santistevan , Alex Neville, Marya Errin Jones, David Forlano, Ryan Dennison, Lee Montgomery, Marisa Demarco, Hannah Colton, Dylan McLaughlin, Monica Demarco, Mauro Woody, Clifford Grindstaff, Kenneth Cornell

Visit KUNM post for info and to stream the entire 8 hour set.

Dylan McLaughlinComment
Scores for Subsonic Frequencies
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A new series. Mapping existing frequencies produced by the resonance of rocks. These are frequencies inaudible to the human ear, essentially becoming scores for non-human consumption. Will update soon with more info.

Dylan McLaughlinComment
There Must Be Other Names for the River - National Hispanic Cultural Center. 2019.

Presented by 516 ARTS, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and University of New Mexico Art & Ecology.

A score for six singers with mics, loop stations, effects pedals, and amplification. Or to be performed a cappella next to the river.

Six singers embody the Rio Grande physically and spatially, singing a score based on historic river flow data through present day and projecting possible futures. Scrutinizing human decisions that dry the river for miles at a time in recent years, we communicate directly our trajectory with this lifeline of water in the desert. This piece is based on 1974-2017 streamflow data from the river known today as the Rio Grande. The colors for each individual score—which are performed simultaneously—were chosen based on the hues in the region.

Featuring: Monica Demarco, Ryan Dennison, Kenneth Cornell, Marya Errin Jones, Antonia Montoya, Mauro Woody

Composed by: Marisa Demarco, Dylan McLaughlin, Jessica Zeglin

Presented by 516 ARTS, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and UNM Art & Ecology. A score for six singers with mics, loop stations, effects pedals, and amplification. Or to be performed a cappella next to the river. Six singers embody the Rio Grande physically and spatially, singing a score based on historic river flow data through present day and projecting possible futures. Scrutinizing human decisions that dry the river for miles at a time in recent years, we communicate directly our trajectory with this lifeline of water in the desert. This piece is based on 1974-2017 streamflow data from the river known today as the Rio Grande. The colors for each individual score—which are performed simultaneously—were chosen based on the hues in the region. Featuring: Monica Demarco Ryan Dennison Kenneth Cornell Marya Errin Jones Antonia Montoya Mauro Woody Composed by: Marisa Demarco Dylan McLaughlin Jessica Zeglin

Dylan McLaughlinComment
"Dismantle a World" sound performance at Thoma Foundation. 2019.
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DIGITAL ARTIFACTS: CLOSING RECEPTION & PERFORMANCE

Dismantle a World is a sound performance embodying the historic and ongoing tension between technology, industry, the land, and its people. In particular, the tension between the exploitative weapons manufacturer Fairchild Semiconductor and the local Navajo Nation become the backdrop from which Dylan pulls technological and visual references. To tell this story, the artist dons a self-designed wearable textile instrument which covers his entire upper body. The instrument's "face" is a modified circuitboard, its copper wiring responding to touch and movement by creating sound. Video footage of idyllic New Mexico landscapes act as background. The performance both absorbs and projects the presence of place, combining harmony and noise, beauty and violence, human and technology.

Dylan McLaughlinComment
Species In Peril - 516 ARTS. 2019.

516 ARTS - Species In Peril website

“As the snow melts in the mountains and runs to the rivers, water and climate change experts look to the Rio Grande, which for the first time in memory became dry for miles in 2018. In There Must Be Other Names for the River, six singers embody the Rio Grande physically and spatially, singing a score based on historic river flow data through the present day, and then projecting possible futures. Scrutinizing human decisions and their impact on the flows, they communicate directly our trajectory with this lifeline of water in the desert.”

The Rio Grande has become a fragmented river. From its headwaters in the San Juan Range of the Colorado Rockies to the Gulf of Mexico, the Rio Grande draws from 11% of the continental U.S., with much of that being drought-prone land. That vulnerability is aggravated by scores of dams and irrigation diversions, which have left significant portions of the river dry. There are 15 dams on the Rio Grande, many of them in New Mexico. Flows are significant until Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico. Most of the water for the city of El Paso comes from this reservoir. Downstream, at the American Dam, much of the flow in the Rio Grande is diverted for irrigation and municipal uses in both Texas and Mexico. From here, the Rio Grande has little or no flow until joined by the Río Conchos and the Pecos River. Further downriver, additional withdrawals for agricultural and municipal use, coupled with the relatively low influx of water from tributaries, reduce the flow. In some years, the Rio Grande flow does not even make it to the sea.

Collaboration with Marisa Demarco and Jessica Zeglin for Species In Peril at 516 Arts in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The work will be performance on November 16 at National Hispanic Cultural Center.

Dylan McLaughlinComment
Resonant Affect - Solo Exhibition - Ellsworth Gallery
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New works at Ellsworth Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico 1 August - 8 September.

Landscape creates frequency. A perfectly complex system of notation that orchestrates the way plants root, the way water flows, the way tectonic plates shift. It is possible to witness these frequencies - through light, through color, through geography, through the ensemble of audible sounds. We experience those within the human sonic perception, as well as those too low or high for us to hear. Human beings have embedded landscapes with resonant characters, resonant actors. This body of work explores a contextualizing of landscapes as score. An exploration of resonant affect.

“Dylan McLaughlin’s photographic imagery is simultaneously disorienting and alluring. First entranced by texture and palette, it is only upon approaching the image more closely that the viewer may realize that what they are viewing is not an abstraction but a clear documentation of man’s insertion of himself into the natural landscape. Harnessing the surveillance and military technology of the drone, McLaughlin’s work reorients the viewer in relation to familiar landscapes and structures - most visibly the numerous power lines that crisscross the landscape of what is now known as New Mexico - creating alternate/alternative horizons. These are the resonant characters and actors of which he writes. McLaughlin utilizes research techniques and data collection to expose and investigate manipulated and manufactured landscapes and lines.”

-Ellsworth Gallery

Dylan McLaughlinComment
Lines Over San Juan Generating Station. 2019.
 
 

Lines - San Juan Generating Station Speaks - 2019

A meditation on vibrations transmitted from power lines running out of the San Juan Generating Station in Northern New Mexico. This work explores new concepts of cartography. Looking to lines in landscape, this image is recontextualized as an experimental music score, workshopped with musicians and performed.

Landscape creates frequency. A perfectly complex system of notation that orchestrates the way plants root, the way water flows, the way tectonic plates shift. It is possible to witness these frequencies - through light, through color, through geography, through the ensemble of sounds audible. We experience those within the human sonic perception, as well as those too low or high for us to hear. Human beings have embedded landscapes with resonant characters, resonant actors. This body of work explores a contextualizing of landscapes as score. An exploration of resonant affect.

themagsantafe.com/in-the-ruins-of-the-anthropocene/

Dylan McLaughlinComment
There Must Be Other Names for the River. 2019.

Graphic score made from data visualization of historic streamflow data from the Rio Grande, and projected futures.

Six singers will embody the Rio Grande physically and spatially, singing a score based on historic river flow data and projecting possible futures. Scrutinizing human decisions that dry the river for miles at a time in recent years, this composition, performance, and installation aims to communicate directly our trajectory with this lifeline of water in the desert. The day after the performance in the museum, we performed for the river. Featuring: Monica Demarco (as headwaters) Ryan Dennison (as Albuquerque area) Kenneth Cornell (as below Elephant Butte) Antonia Montoya (as El Paso area) Mauro Woody (as Big Bend in Texas) Jessica Chao (as the mouth at the Gulf of Mexico) A collaborative work by: Marisa Demarco Dylan McLaughlin Jessica Zeglin

A performance within Deep Time Lab organized by Nina Elder. In conjunction with Arts Unexpected.

Dylan McLaughlin
It Sounds Like a River Leaping and Falling; It Sounds Like a Body Falling Apart. 2019.

vibrations modulate gene body landscape topography sound choreographed in geometric swell monumental movement oscillation connection burrows into skin into blood into bone

corporeal quartet resonates quadraphonic panning rhythm sines; melody of humanity, of living familiar tongue because it is felt ambient open air audio frequencies from the largest body we can know, intimately

duets of chance visceral vibrations, pressures and displacements washing through spectral spaces massaged moments of intersecting waves determined by waves in polyphonic conversation

Dylan McLaughlin
The People Who Invent the Tools to Invent the Dismantling of a World In Harmony. 2019.

In the 1957, American company Fairchild Semiconductor is becoming one of the leaders of technological innovation through the evolving design of the transistor and integrated circuit, paving the path for the technological world we’ve come to know so intimately. 

The legacy of Fairchild is a dissonant one, being responsible for everything from the ArmaLite rifle, the AR15, the Apollo guidance computer, and chips for nuclear missiles. In an era before overseas production outsourcing, Fairchild built a factory in Shiprock, New Mexico, hiring over a thousand Navajo women. The company presented the idea to the Navajo Nation as craft production, comparing transistor design to that of textile design. Not mentioning the exploitive intentions of choosing the workforce due to a lack of labor rights asserted by the women. This is a perpetuation of dissonance.

Another story tells that the evolution of the design of the transistor eventually leads to the development of the integrated circuit based synthesizer. The oscillation of which has become present in just about every aspect of the world we experience.

The People Who Invent the Tools to Invent the Dismantling of a World In Harmony is an embodiment of these tensions in history and technology. It exists as an instrument built on a synthesizer circuit, creating patterns of oscillation feedback. It exists as instrument of the embodiment of place in an act of story and dissonance.

Dylan McLaughlin
At a Glimpse of a Boundary. 2018.

Exploration and collaboration with Marlee Grace at the edge of the world. Soundtrack by Emily A. Sprague. Commission on Super 8mm by Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles, CA.

marleegrace.space
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Dylan McLaughlin
And So We Sing the Land

Coherence/Interference was an audience-generated sound performance comprised of a large video projection, two regalia-draped figures -- one containing a smaller tablet-sized video and the other operating as an interactive sound device.  This piece was an active response to the nearby Chevron Questa Mine Superfund site, featured in both videos. The smaller video shared facts about the mines legacy interspersed with the phrase "and so we sing the land." The larger projection featured drone-shot video of the mined landscape. This image was manipulated by a computer program that synced to a microphone-like instrument embedded in the second figure.

The sonic dimension of the piece was based on the ancestral musical scoring practice of Northern Plains people, which was defined by the study of horizon lines and the response of "singing the land’s song-lines." Coherence/Interference invited individual audience members to participate in this singing practice by placing one's face inside of a miked mask and creating a vocalization. The singing voice cleared the video projection's distortion, revealing the landscape. The singer, however, was masked from seeing the impact of their voice, sacrificing their own vision so that others can see clearly. Coherence/Interference effectively bound geography to culture, creating an opportunity for audiences to resonate with the landscape and participate in its healing. The piece is part of a larger body of work called CauseLines that investigates sites affected by extraction with aims to share Indigenous practices in the healing of sacred land. 

Winter Count collaborated with artists Jesse Hazelip and Ann Lewis .

Written by curator Erin Elder

https://www.erinelder.com/we-are-all-space-in-time

Dylan McLaughlinTaos Paseo
There is a River There. 2018.

There is a River There is a performance showcased at Declarations at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. The performance is part of the installation titled We Are in Crisis is a collaboration between artists Dylan McLaughlin, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ginger Dunnill, Demian Dinéyazhi, and Laura Ortman.

We Are in Crisis suggests that moments of “crisis” can be a positive if they awaken us to the need for change and inspire action. Winter Count developed this “gratitude film,” as part of its opposition to the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline, which if built would pass through lands and waters sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.