Interdisciplinary artist Christine Cassano stacked over 500 translucent porcelain types resembling human vertebrae atop a horizontal mirror in 2022, collaborating with intermedia artist Shomit Barua to create Levels of Granularity at type & idea in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As viewers neared the set up, they heard motion-reactive audio created by the refined impacts of their actions on these types meant to disintegrate over time, very like the human physique finally returns to the earth.
Cassano has been creating the types by hand, imprinting each along with her personal fingerprints, since 2012, when shaping the fabric grew to become a solution to course of a hip substitute surgical procedure. “It was my approach of working by means of what had occurred inside my physique,” Cassano instructed Hyperallergic. “Once I make them I really feel related to consciousness; my palms don’t must be instructed what to do, they only know.”
She calls these small types noēma, explaining that the time period means “psychological object” or “content material of a thought.” The types run all through her present physique of labor, together with work and drawings she calls “psychological equations.”
Not too long ago, Cassano has been making bronze noēma for an set up that can grasp suspended inside an atrium at type & idea throughout its upcoming Arrivals exhibition, in addition to large-scale work created by dipping the types in paint, then setting them atop surfaces the place they oscillate and make marks in response to vibrations.
“My work facilities dynamic programs,” she defined.
She’s labored with numerous supplies over time — from fragments of saguaro cactus ribs to woven strands of her personal lengthy hair. As her perspective has shifted, her artwork apply has developed.
Cassano recollects exploring the physique and expertise as a youthful artist, taking what she calls a “micro-perspective.” Later, she started taking a look at aerial views, eager about cities as circuits, for instance. Extra just lately she’s turned outward. “Now I’m taking a look at cosmology, eager about quantum physics and the best way every little thing is related by power and vibrations.”
Her work is closely influenced by a perceptual phenomenon skilled by simply 1 to 4% of the inhabitants. “I’ve synesthesia, which is a mixing of the senses,” stated Cassano. “It could possibly make issues very difficult, nevertheless it’s additionally a conduit to creativity.”
Cassano describes listening to sound as an intensely seen expertise that happens inside her thoughts’s eye. “For me, sound produces intricate, geometric, morphogenic, three-dimensional types that transfer by means of psychological house and transfer in actual time,” she stated. “The frequency, resonance, pitch, and tempo all instantly have an effect on the form and motion of the shape.” She doesn’t straight switch the types into particular works, however says they influence her artistic course of.
Sound and vibration have been on the forefront of Cassano’s artwork apply for about three years. Whether or not utilizing sound gear to make the vibrations that rework her noema into portray instruments, or assembling hanging installations of noēma that create “infinite preparations of pitches, tones, and resonance” when touched, she’s primarily working to make sound seen.
“My mind is a hyperconnected factor,” stated Cassano. “Quite a lot of what I’m actually doing right here is making my perceptions seen to others by means of sounds, objects, and environments.”
