Analemma

solo work / April 2023
Photography 

This project explores the confluence of sonic phenomena and analog photographic printing. In the darkroom, a laser is aimed at a mirror adhered to the membrane of a speaker. While the speaker plays digitally synthesized audio, the laser interrogates the sound’s vibrational movement and reflects it onto a sheet of darkroom paper where an exposure of this movement is traced. What results is a photograph reminiscent of generative art, yet also employing artist intervention and chance. Programming different synth patches results in different patterns and curves. Despite the capacity for digital audio synthesis and photographic technologies to create near perfect mechanical reproductions of sound and image, the inherent volatility of darkroom chemistry, structural limits of a speaker’s architecture, and my own human error result in each print being entirely unique.

In giving form to that which is intangible, I draw metaphorical parallels to my personal journey of cultural reclamation. Notions of race, culture, and identity, like sound and light, have an amorphous quality. In attempting to sculpt these, I hope to provide commentary on the plasticity of mixed-race identity and the invisible labor of understanding heritage and self.

The name is derived from the astronomical diagrams that depict the sun’s position from a fixed location over the course of a year, evoking notions of the temporal, planetary, and metaphysical.