Pulse Memorial
currently in progress (2024)
The most recent iteration is a web boradcast, https://pulse.listen, made in collaboration with August Black.
SIGGRAPH paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3680530.3695450
The Pulse Temple is a speculative memorial that engages the mass shooting that killed forty-nine latine, Black, and queer patrons of the Pulse Bar in Orlando, Florida. The event occurred June 6th 2016, during a time of heightened fears amongst many immigrant and marginalized communities dreading and anticipating the Trump election victory. In the first memorial iteration, my collaborator, J Molina-Garcia, takes photographs of handwritten messages written on the current Pulse bar memorial and turn them into a series of forty-nine paper boxes, one representing each victim. The boxes are sized to hypothetically fit the volume of blood in an average human body, and, shown in public, are offered to visitors as an opportunity to hold, touch, and visualize the fragility of the human body. Each box has been printed with cyanotype chemistry and altered through mineral toners, giving each the appearance of rust or earthly erosion.
I generate sound through a technique of data sonification using numerical data associated with each victim (their birthday and victim number, listed alphabetically) to craft several original musical scores. The sound is meant to function as a narrative or memorials to commemorate the victims. The sound installations are digital and thus do not only exist on fixed spaces, but are grafted temporarily onto already existing architecture. Moreover, this proposal reimagines the potential of vibrational sonic experiences: the basis for many esoteric healing practices, such as those found in sound baths and tantric chanting, for example, where vibrations at particular frequencies cause calming, soothing, and meditative states of rest. The final output will be through web streaming, particularly through mobile browsers, of audience members to create a digital caphony memorial.
Our future work will explore haptics and geolocation, aiming to use the Web Vibration API (currently in development) to combine tactile feedback with streaming and enhance the Memorial's accessibility. Participants will ideally hold devices to their chest to feel vibrations. Additionally, we will integrate the Geolocation API to show the relative proximity of connected participants through multiple dots in the interface. Additionally we will collaborate with the community in Florida, and composers/ misucians to create 41 more tracks, yield 49 in total. As a memorial experience, drawing participants together in a shared moment of reflection and remembrance, the aim is to continue to grow this sense of proximity, shared space, and community that the web provides.
8 Channel soundscape
Mobile interface view:
Technical diagram