O’Steen and Ogasian work collaboratively to produce multimedia, research based installations. Their work incorporates sculptural elements, digital media, drawing, writing, and photography, and their studio practice takes a flexible, idea driven approach.
Their projects always involve fieldwork, and installations incorporate artifacts and “data” collected from the landscape itself, and are inspired by their immediate surroundings. Their work focuses on our relationship with a changing environment, and uses methodologies borrowed from citizen science to critique traditional notions of exploration and conquest.
They attempt to re-orient themselves in a contemporary world dominated by data and technology, where the romantic and adventurous spirit of discovery has been lost or forgotten. They are interested in the moments where science and technology give rise to the nebulous, the enigmatic, the mysterious – where the primary goal is to “make sense” rather than to objectively know.
Technology is inherently part of the process of exploring, allowing the artists to extend their bodies, senses, and thoughts across great distances whether deep within or far away. Within this context, wonder connects to an instance of “new knowing”, a re-encountering of familiar terrain.
Their work is performative, casting the artists in the role of explorer or knowledge seeker within scenarios that are at once deeply absurd and poetic. The glitches or errors that occur within the process are celebrated not only as deviations from the intended path, but as potential points of departure for the imagination.
Due to its size and depth, Lake Superior exists at a multitude of scales simultaneously, slow moving river, lake and ocean. Fluctuating water levels, monitored in real time across days, years and centuries contribute to our understanding of climate change and its impact on weather, ecosystems and coasts.
For Rabbit Island, we will develop a series of portable sculptures that will function as observational stations as well as repositories of information. These sculptures will be inspired by the NOAA monitoring systems used locally such as the Great Lakes Water Levels Monitoring Network.
Acknowledging that every detail matters, our systems will monitor minute changes that occur on the ground over the time span of the residency. We will poetically measure wind, waves, visibility, water-level and temperature, exploring both the possibilities and limitations afforded by perceptual observation. Our observations will be contextualized vis-a-vis large, ongoing collections of data via satellite imagery, scientific instrumentation, human memory and citizen science intended to help predict the future of the lake. The project will touch upon the lake as a “site of memory” by examining how winter conditions contribute to subsequent summers, while also engaging human memory by exploring indigenous observations of the landscape.
