In early 2020, I’ve begun a collection of projects which prototype culturally situated knowledge production in a world where dominant culture collapses all meanings into one lineage (see Anti-Assimilation, esp. Sadie Prego).

Each instrument explores ways of listening, knowing, and “tuning into” that build on non-eurocentric, non-masculine histories, and so may not speak to all audiences. These are not scientific instruments, but they do help people produce knowledge.

Exploring or examining - those are scientific or even colonial terms. Categorizing, analyzing, “learning the science behind” something.

Instead these instruments invite intimacy with hidden landscapes, or shared secrets hiding in plain sight – like a fourth color, or an untranslatable word.

Projects

As these projects progress, I’ll continue posting here with more about each instrument:

• Porcelain spectrometer - the first in the collection, this exploration of a possible past imagines an artifact of an alternative origin story, a spectrometer in the tradition of Joseon period Korean inkwells.
• Sky lanterns - coming soon
• Hot Water Fishing - coming soon
• 1000周 / 1000hz egg - coming soon

Images CC-BY-SA Jeffrey Yoo Warren