USB drive – Permeated Transmissions

As the boundaries between society and nature continue to blur, so too does the risk of spillover: the leap of pathogens from one species to another, ultimately reaching humans. A process that the recent pandemic has shown capable of affecting not only remote ecosystems, but also highly technological urban areas. Spillover is the work of Pierce Warnecke and Matthew Biederman, initially developed in dialogue with local activists committed to denouncing the European Union’s push towards energies considered ‘clean’, which nevertheless carry a significant environmental impact due to the extraction of heavy metals. Walking with the activists and collecting firsthand testimonies, the two artists located mining sites and turned them into visual and sound material, photographing and modeling them in 3D through photogrammetry and drone techniques. The result takes the form of a layering of synthetic landscapes and manipulated samples, in which electronic textures, deep frequencies and grainy textures are interwoven with the materials recorded in the field. The data points become not only images, but also sound structures, translated into streams that alternate between abstract moments and dense passages, almost evoking the pressure exerted on communities and ecosystems. The soundscapes, never purely illustrative, work rather as a conceptual counterpoint: throbbing basslines, glitches and suspended harmonic fragments build an acoustic space that restores the fragility of transforming landscapes and the tension between industrial exploitation and environmental resilience. In this way, Spillover is situated in a space that is neither documentary nor purely aesthetic, but which uses audiovisual language to make visible the systemic links between ecological crisis, mining and social relapses. There is a strong desire to transcend linear narrative and to restore a process: not a story, but a field of forces in which the listener is immersed. The design and the resulting performance become a laboratory of listening and seeing, in which environmental data is converted into light frequencies and geometries that intensify our perceptual impact. Spillover – commissioned by the INDEX Digital Art Biennale in Braga and now published by Permeated Transmissions in USB drive format – appears therefore as an attempt to transform data, maps and testimonies into an immersive experience, prompting listeners to reflect on what it means to inhabit the margins between society and nature. From this perspective, the work does not limit itself to documenting an issue, but suggests a mode of critical listening capable of translating into sensitive forms the often invisible dynamics that run through our ecosystems.

 

Pierce Warnecke + Matthew Biederman – Spillover