GRADY GERBRACHT 62931-62943, 2007 Projection, DVD 18 minutes

62931-62943 exists as a series of photographs and a meditative audio/video gallery installation in which the artist visualizes planes of pure sound that correspond to the field recordings he made of various spans of high tension wire. 62931-62943 is an alternate mapping of the landscape of rural southern Brazil, which ignores property boundaries. The video, through a very abstract narrative, tells the story of the artist’s discovery of and fascination with this sonic phenomenon during his daily walks through the fields while in residence at Projeto LoMBA ALtA. It chronicles his daily encounters with imaginary architectures of pure sonic vibration in “agricultural time” - a slower kind of time within which the local agricultural community functions. It is based on natural rhythms like the growth of crops, the fattening of animals, and the change of seasons. The project engages in a dialog with the history of earth art (Smithson) and conceptual art (Morris), as well as modern ambient music composition (Young, Cage, Riley).

This project was made possible, in part, by funding from Projeto LoMBA ALtA, and by the Brazilian Ministry of culture.

BIO

Grady Gerbracht is an artist whose work focuses on the ordering systems of everyday life. Inspired by personal observations and life experiences; Gerbracht's projects employ art, architecture, sound and social dynamics to render these systems temporarily visible. He is Assistant Professor of Art at Stony Brook University, and serves on the Board of Directors of Fundacao Lomba Alta which administers PROJETO LOMBA ALTA, an international artists residency in the south of Brazil. His projects have been published and exhibited in the US, Canada, Brazil, Asia, and across Europe and the nordic countries. He has organized exhibitions such as Back and Forth, Global Priority, and Civic Performance that have traveled internationally. Ongoing research includes Sonic Architectures, a series of live events wherein the artist and collaborators perform the post-industrial built environment using only their bodies. Sound compositions derived from such performances combined with ambient site recordings are later re-inserted into the original context as installations for the Site & Sound series. Gerbracht and his collaborators were awarded a Danish Arts Council Grant for 2006 - 2007.