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Autofluorescence WEBT

Autofluorescence image captured through the Keith Porter Image Facility, UMBC. WEBT is 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 CIRCA UMBC summer research fund. Detail of the sampling tray with cultured micro-fragments of trash found at MCEEC shoreline. Macro view off the trash with biofilm on the edges. Culture was initiated October 2017. Date of above image is approximately January 2018. As of June 2018 the culture has been maintained and has stabilized. Cultures are currently housed at the Keith Porter Imaging Facility and my […]

Past Acoustic Ecology

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. The follow movie documents the interactive web cam and underwater microphone embedded within the measuring post, which users could remotely observe approximately 250 degrees of the landscape and also listen to sounds below the surface of the North Sea 24/7 days a week. This was a year long project. Sea Quiver, February 2010 sonified the North Sea high winds off the coast of Germany, commissioned by an arts and ecology collective from Oldenburg, Germany, to raise attention to the Wattemmeer mudflats. The installation was up for […]

Early trash & eco works

The following projects trace my early relationship to solid waste in America and how we seem to be drowning in our success is creating stuff, unable to figure out what to do with it except sweep it under the rug, deposited in a landfill. Inspired by the 1989 Mobro 4000 trash barge that traveled halfway around the globe trying to find a place to dump, I created Eco-Core Sampling Project that incorporates eight one mile walks in various areas of Tallahassee, Florida. I collected trash on eight walks, including public and private spaces where trash might be found then installed the collection into the window segmented into eight quadrants. LOCATION: Window on Gaines Street, Tallahassee, Florida, 1989 The trash was weighed and documented by photocopying each piece noting the source, company, a personal address, or other text information which might be pertinent to locating the place of origin. The debris from our successful consumption […]

Water’s Edge, Biome Tells

“Everything now came before me in new and beautiful and remarkable forms. I began to see and hear not only the outer forms, but also the inner content, the nature and the history of things.” Ernst Haeckel, describing the microscopic radiolarian forms he was drawing and researching around the 1860s. Radiolarians are tiny protists that live inside the intricate silica shells found at the bottom of the ocean. 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 […]

Sound Ecological Response

Stone Music: Geology Sounding Ringing Rocks County Park, PA. in collaboration with Ed Ruchalski Place-based sound intervention. 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 […]

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.

Xiamen ink washes

Through out my time in Xiamen, I maintained a journal/sketchbook. The influence of living in South Korea and being exposed to calligraphy, silk drawings, and writing characters has been reignited from this most recent trip to China. I purchased a tube of Chinese ink and a brush along with some other tools for the following explorations.

X.U. Sandao Gallery

Last Thursday night, July 9 was the opening of an exhibition at the Sandao Gallery, Xiamen University, where I had four bodies of work on exhibit. The work in the images is from the new series called “John Thomson Reframed.” More information will be added in the near future.

Art Student’s videos

Xiamen University art students produced a 2-3 minute video art project within a little over a week. After the students were introduced to a brief history of the medium of video art, they were instructed to produce a work that was important to them at this moment in their lives.

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