Eclipse

Eclipse, is a site-responsive video installation with spatial sound design (7’05” loop), dimensions variable and highly adaptable to various spaces, a publication with original photography by Sayler/Morris extends the content of the installation.

The work commemorates a lost species: the passenger pigeon, whose once massive population went extinct 100 years ago. As of the mid-19th Century, this dove-like bird was the most abundant bird species in North America and flew in flocks of millions that would literally darken the skies for hours when passing over. Audubon likened their appearance to a noonday eclipse.

The original installation was designed specifically for MASS MoCA and was projected onto a wall and 50-foot high ceiling.  The birds traveled over the heads of viewers, traveling a full distance of about 100 feet.  The piece has since been re-configured for other spaces, including as a towering array of eight monitors extending into the atrium of the Berman Museum, a single 16:9 projection unto to the four-story tower at The Momentary / Crystal Bridges, and surreal projection outside the former bedroom of Thomas Cole. The piece was originally conceived during a series of conversations with the author Elizabeth Kolbert about extinction—how to memorialize it and what such memorials can accomplish.

The Eclipse artist publication can be viewed here.

From Christian Wiman, “From a Window” (reference courtesy of Joe Thompson):

I saw a tree inside a tree
rise kaleidoscopically

as if the leaves had livelier ghosts.
I pressed my face as close

to the pane as I could get
to watch that fitful, fluent spirit

that seemed a single being undefined
or countless beings of one mind

haul its strange cohesion
beyond the limits of my vision

over the house heavenwards.