Mori: an Internet-based Earthwork
Ken Goldberg, Randall Packer, Wojciech Matusik, and Gregory Kuhn
Debuted at the InterCommunication Center (ICC) Tokyo, Japan, October 18 - November 28, 1999
NY Debut, Kitchen Art Gallery
March 13 - April 15, 2003
Toured with: Telematic Connections: A Virtual Embrace (sponsored by Walker Art Center)
• 9/5/02 - 11/3/02, Oklahoma City Museum of Art
• 10/11/01 - 11/25/01, Atlanta College of Art Gallery
• 7/20/01 - 9/18/01, Austin Museum of Art
• 5/12/01 -6/30/01, Art Center, Pasadena, CA
• 2/7/01 - 3/24/01, San Francisco Art Institute
All flesh is grass.'' -- Isaiah (40:6)
Mori is an Internet-based earthwork that engages the earth as a living medium. In this installation, minute movements of the Hayward Fault in California are detected by a seismograph, converted to digital signals, and transmitted continuously via the Internet to the installation.
Inside the entry curtain, visitors follow a fiber-optic cable to the center of the resonating enclosure where a portal through the floor frames the installation's focal point. The live seismic data stream drives an embedded visual display and immersive low-frequency sounds, which echo the unpredictable fluctuations of the earth's movement.
The title links the Japanese term for "forest-sanctuary" with the Latin "reminder of mortality." In "Mori," the immediacy of the telematic embrace between earth and visitor questions the authenticity of mediated experience in the context of chance, human fragility, and geological endurance.