KAATERSKILL FALLS -- 

                                 
           To him in the love of Nature holds
                                        
       Communion with her visible forms,
                                     
                She speaks a various lanuage;...

                                              
                             

                          THANATOPSIS
 
                       
                      William Cullen Bryant  

CoLabART - Lynn Small + Dennis Paul
KAATERSKILL FALLS
in 1995 code


VOICE OF THE LANDSCAPE
A Palimpsest of Time and Place


Thomas Cole
Painter, Poet, Prophet

Earth Elegies III


Multimedia Installation
Work in Progress

Below are video examples of this immersive, evolving site-specific project


WebClip [42 seconds]

 


Concept [7 minutes]

 


Four-Channel [7 minutes]

 

 

The Voice of the Landscape installation draws inspiration from Kaaterskill Falls, the Hudson River Valley and the first public lands set aside for future generations - the Catskill Preserve in New York State. Since the early 19th century, this area has served as a creative wellspring for American painting, photography, literature, philosophy, and environmentalism. The conceptualization of this major multi-channel, mixed media installation was stimulated by the beginnings of America's unique voice and our desire to be a part of the transformation of the "sense of place" landscape tradition.

We seek a new fluidity of expression that morphs traditional forms into the new century. Much as photography, film and video changed the fixed images of painting, the digital domain has radically and forever altered the making of marks. This new palette of tools extends the parameters of imagination and enables us to create a dialogue among painting, photography, literature, education, the inspiring sounds of nature, and the experiential world to be.

The installation requires at least 2, preferably 4, video projectors, DVD players and a sound system, preferably 5.1. In addition, a dedicated computer can be added for an interactive component whereby the viewers can directly participate and collaborate with the artists on one of the earliest pieces of interactive literature on the Internet. The visitor interacts with the installation and creates their own unique poem, thus adding their voice to The Tapestry of Hope, a meditative prayer for the future well-being of the Earth. Their poem will then become a part of a worldwide archive, Evolution: A Tapestry of Hope.

The waterfall…at once presents to the mind the beautiful, but apparently incongruous idea, of fixedness and motion - a single existence in which we perceive unceasing change and everlasting duration. The waterfall may be called the voice of the landscape, for, unlike the rocks and woods which offer sounds as the passive instruments played upon by the elements, the waterfall strikes its own chords, and rocks and mountains reecho in rich unison…

THOMAS COLE - from one of his notebooks

 

KAATERSKILL FALLS, the Clove and the surrounding areas served as the creative wellspring for the first indigenous school of American painting, and was inspirational to early American literature and philosophy.


These lands were held to be sacred grounds by Native Americans and KAATERSKILL FALLS was believed to be the resting place of the Creator and was known as the Great Wall of Manitou.


This site, outside of Catskill, New York lies within the first public land in the United States set aside for the use of future generations. "FOREVER WILD," the New York State Constitutional Amendment, which predates the National Parks System, created the CATSKILL and ADIRONDACK Preserves and saved these lands from further development.


The spirituality of the 19th Century transcendentalism, with its God-like belief in the ecology of nature over the material world, provides an interesting counterpoint to the ecological nightmare of the 21th Century. It would appear that the messy by-product of our ever-increasingly materialistic choices provide the very seeds to the continuing bankruptcy of our spiritual ecology. The inherent dangers seem to be fed by our ability to ignore the harming of nature itself, as well as the damage we inflict upon ourselves.


The cost of this resulting loss
will far outstrip that of any other...

 

 

INSTALLATION OVERVIEW

& PROJECT STATEMENT

 

 

 

 



CoLabART - Lynn Small + Dennis Paul
VOICE OF THE LANDSCAPE 1990
FOREVER WILD SERIES
Face+Verso

New Year's Card Series

 

VOICE OF THE LANDSCAPE
EARTH ELEGIES III

Multimedia Installation
Work-in-Progress

Project

 

 

With Nature's revealed truth












The magnificence



For all to share


Savored for the moment


Man is but a strand
in the web of life

 



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