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Trash Culture: Water’s Edge Biome Tells

Water’s Edge, Biome Tells – Trash Culture (WEBT) focuses on the cultivation and identification of microorganisms found growing on debris collected within the littoral zone of the Patapsco River’s brackish Middle Branch at Masonville Cove in the Brooklyn community of Baltimore. For this interdisciplinary sci-art project, collaborators Stephen Bradley, media artist, and imaging scientist, Dr. Tagide deCarvalho, director, Keith Porter Imaging Facility, UMBC, use various tools of ecological research that inform sculptural and visualization references and renditions. Trash Culture informs the complex relationships between discarded material culture and the ecological system in the Inner Harbor. Compounding elements from the scientific “lab” and the artist studio, Bradley and deCarvalho strive to find a middle space of inquiry shared by the parallel processes of art and science. The purpose of the project identifies and documents the living organisms that continue to survive and evolve within the compromised waters of Masonville Cove. Representations […]

Water flea

Confocal microscopic image captured through the Keith Porter Image Facility, UMBC, a collaborative project between Stephen Bradley & Dr. Tagide deCarvalho, UMBC. The process is called autofluorescence a natural emission of light by biological structures such as mitochondria and lysosomes when they have absorbed light, and is used to distinguish the light originating from artificially added fluorescent markers (fluorophores). The bug was sampled from Masonville Cove Environmental Education Center, next to Brooklyn & Curtis Bay, Maryland, August 2017. The overall project is called Water’s Edge, Biome Tells, funded by a UMBC summer research fund.

Acoustic Ecology, site specific works.

These are reworked documented projects that function as archival prints with QR Codes embedded in that extend the work beyond the 2d surface. Sound and the sites were critical aspects of all three of these projects. The site-specific acoustic works address the challenges of a trans-global consumer-based economy that ultimately stresses the oceans and seas, that exhausts resources without considering how to sustain our current level of “progress,” and how to curtail pollution left behind. Ohr am Wattenmeer / Ear to the Sea was commissioned through the University of Oldenburg, Germany, a collaboration with scientists to listen/surveil from a remote scientific monitoring the rare and delicate environment of the Wattenmeer mudflats. We embedded a hydrophone and interactive web camera on the Mess Station just off the island of Speikeroog one of several barrier islands off the coast of North Germany. Each print is embedded with a QR Code that allows […]

Sounding: Ringing Rocks County Park – PA

Stone Music: Geology Sounding Edited Google landsat image of the area of the Ringing Rock stone field. We were located at the red “X.” Last June, 14 I met up with Ed Ruchalski from Syracuse at 8:00 AM to perform and experiment in the football size and mysterious seven acre field of boulders located appropriately named Ringing Rocks County Park, PA. We knew one another through a radio project called art@radio that I started in 1999 that ended around 2011. Photograph by Ruchalski of Bradley swinging the DIY buzz-roarer. Above is a composition created shortly after the site visit with Ed Ruchalski based on the concept of an “audio journal” or soundscape collage. We created rhythmic structures that other sounds were integrated from various instruments we carried with us out into the park. There were moments when we would be subtle and the birds would add their chorus lines […]

Water’s Edge, Biome Tells

WEBT is an interdisciplinary art-science research project that focuses on the microscopic life forms found within the littoral zone of the brackish shoreline of the Patapsco River’s Middle Branch at Masonville Cove in the Brooklyn community of Baltimore. For many years, micro fauna and flora that reside at the water’s edge of Masonville Cove have been subjected to high levels of pollution due in part to the dumping of dredged materials from the Baltimore harbor, compounded by massive quantities of discarded debris from human activities. more info further down. The project is a collaboration between Stephen Bradley and Dr. Tagide deCaralho, director of the Keith Porter Imaging Facility, UMBC. [About the above banner image: Magnification: 159 X, air bubbles attached to Closterium pritchardianum [?]. Identified through the Maryland Biodiversity Project.] SITES / timeframe: 061917 Library Pond, UMBC campus Testing the stereo microscope using a new NIKON adaptor for the D7000. […]

Older works archived

CALL & RESPONSE Project concept was to monitor and sonify & visualize changes in the water quality to users’ smartphones and to a more permanent kiosk located next door in the Water Works Museum that was defunded shortly after conceptualizing the project. Assistance from UMBC’s Imaging Research Center, Megan Willy, IRC Intern. 2011. Project was initially proposed at the Jones Falls watershed that terminates in the Baltimore Inner Harbor – next to the Discovery Museum.

No Tricks Were Turned for these Photos

No Tricks Were Turned in These Photos, 2016 from Stephen Bradley on Vimeo.

The Glass Knife

The exhibition was up at the Albin O Khun Gallery UMBC, from April 26 – June 30, 2016. Artists Steve Bradley and Kathy Marmor mined the UMBC archive of Keith Porter, the ‘Father of Cell Biology’ to collaboratively produce The Glass Knife, an installation of sculptures that illuminated Porter’s groundbreaking research, and celebrated a revolutionary vision, mediated by technology, which extends our seeing. What is the glass knife? Background image is from the “Live Culture TV” component of the surface of a growing culture that samples the gallery air space for mold spores. More info: here. More information about the Glass Knife can be found here.

Mediated landscapes

Above image, Abdominal Pain I is from a medical textbook purchased from a library book sale, Computed Tomography with Multiplanar Reconstructions, 1990’s, w 17″ X h 11″ – pages have been rearranged, stacked and glued together based on illustrations, images and text then sanded. Working from discarded, found commercially printed materials as a jumping off point, these works represent and signify my vision of global mediated landscape. Materials range from pop-culture, news magazines, to medical and science textbooks. Choices are based on the quality of printing, paper, color and texture. Abdominal Pain II, pages from the chapter, Abdominal Sonography, w 18 X h 11.5, Beginning with a block of glued and frozen layered pages and ground (sanded) down until a story or potential narrative appears to emerge. The goal is to speak above and below the surface of the high resolution, pristine, sanitary, graphical and typographical surfaces. [banner image is from the diptych, Tommy Flight, […]

Found wall paintings

For years I have documented odd textures, marks and other human references located in cityscapes; “imprints” in place that when “framed” appear to be abstract paintings. The past two summers I spent a month in Xiamen China, where I rediscovered my interest in these unique textures, primarily found in urban settings. The image in the banner along with the image above are from the ancient Kalyuan Temple, Renshou Pagoda, located in ancient city of Quanzhou the that has two towers in the east and west corners of the land with the temple in the center of the ancient compound. The walls where these were photographed surround the main temple. These appear to be very old with water damage, which makes for the best pictures.

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