emerging practices

This is a new program, as made evident by a lack of material on this website, especially the blog. I am Jordan Dalton, an MFA candidate in UB’s Media Study program, and I have been given the task of filling this EP blog with material for the month of October.

So, before I start posting my and other peoples’ ideas and work, let me introduce myself. I graduated in May of this year from the University of Georgia in Athens with a bachelor’s degree in Honors Disciplinary Studies, focusing on the (regrettably wordy) field of Digital Literature and Dynamic Media. My background, therefore, lies somewhere between Computer Science and Poetics. My work to date has largely been focused on the intersection of language and technology, ranging from experiments in improvised music, to aleatoric/procedural writing techniques, to computer programming as both science and artistic practice.

In short, my work is pretty heady, I suppose.

However, through my degree and a scholarship program at UGA, I have had a sort of secondary field of study that I always found difficult to consolidate with my primary work. I traveled to Australia, New Zealand, Tanzania, and Borneo, and have had additional coursework, all focused on geography, ecology, and sustainability. I intend, during my time here in Buffalo, to bring my work more in line with this subject matter.

New technologies can be powerful tools for enabling social change. However, this particular brand of techno-futurism is blind to potential areas of conflict — who is changing? Is this the desired sort of change? And how does our development and use of technology change the world around us, for the better or worse?

Buffalo is a particularly rich location for this sort of investigation. As one of the poorest cities in the country, a city that has shrank, rather than grown, over the last century, and as a city that is surrounded by natural resources that it has historically, metaphorically and literally shat upon, Buffalo is ready for, and is currently undergoing, dramatic change.

The first area that my research is focusing on, this investigation of how my media practice can utilize tools of social activism and tactical media, as well as explore issues of technological and environmental injustice and racism, is water. Conveniently, Buffalo is surrounded by a tremendous amount of water. One-fifth of the world’s fresh surface-water is located in the Great Lakes, and nearly all of that water flows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario through the Niagara River. I moved from Georgia, a state that was, until very recently, plagued by drought and the overconsumption of water by rapid development, extensive agriculture, and industrial use, to Western New York, an area with no lack of water, but a historical tradition of abusing the hell out of it. Most of Buffalo’s rivers, creeks and streams contain dangerously high levels of organic waste from CSOs (combined sewer overflows, which will certainly be discussed in a later post), and their sediments contain frequently toxic levels of heavy metals and other contaminants left over from the Buffalo-Niagara region’s industrial past.

Along with these ecological issues are social ones. How do we combat, as a community, rampant unemployment, decay and blight in historic neighborhoods, and lack of access to natural resource such as creeks and parks for recreation, while avoiding the abusive mistakes of the past? Issues of access frequently arise — while those with enough money can hire a boat, or travel with their own, out into Lake Erie or to other, more rural streams, to fish in relatively clean waters, perhaps even consuming some of their catch, many of Buffalo’s anglers are forced to fish in local streams, where even having contact with the water by handling a caught fish can have potential health impacts.

Through the center of Buffalo runs Scajaquada Creek, a historically abused water body that still has great potential as a natural resource and site for public recreation. In spite of all of its mistreatment — the creek is interred underground for over a third of its length — there are still locations of great beauty to be found along its banks. It runs beside churches, schools, and a university, and through several public parks. But it also runs beneath a shopping mall and historically industrialized areas, as well as the 198 Expressway. I find this conflict to be fascinating and problematic.

I have begun a project involving sampling sound as an artistic/activist/scientific practice. Two weeks ago, I spent two days traveling along the length of the creek, taking geotagged, two-channel surround “sound samples” from a collection of 19 sites. I intend for this to become a regular practice. In the future, this sound data can be compared to more traditional data from water sampling, such as conductivity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and pH. A pattern that already has become noticeable is in the sound of the water itself — in these samples, the water is heard the loudest in sites containing the most human intervention. These sites, such as the “Finger Dam” near Grant Street, or the outlet in Forest Lawn Cemetery from which the creek emerges from its interment, are also sites where contaminant levels have historically been alarmingly high.

I will certainly have more to say about Scajaquada, and the water resources of Buffalo in general, in future posts, but for this is probably enough for now. Until next time…