Command Center, July 2019
Multi-media immersive installation (Found objects, electronic equipment, collaged archive footage, illustration)
Designed, coordinated, and constructed by Whitney Humphreys while in residence at the LAB MFA summer program at Locust Projects in Miami, Florida
Collaborative contributions provided from the following:
4 Channel video collage editing by Gautama Ramesh
2 Channel sound collage mixing by Alan Fineberg
Documentation by Zachary Balber
The installation in Locust Projects’ Project Room allows visitors to enter an alternate plane of reality, where a distant and mysterious machine known as the Rocket with Hoopskirt is in a perpetual state of pre-departure, monitored from across the country. As a component of my ongoing Gendered Machines focus, the project centers on the 1928 test flight of the “hoopskirt” rocket, a liquid-fueled invention by rocketry pioneer, Robert H. Goddard. The site-specific construction addresses the role that Florida itself has played in the history of rocketry and the impact the project of space travel has made on the state’s cultural, political, economic, and physical landscape.
Built from found and recycled materials, the installation reimagines systems of control by inviting engagement yet denying manipulation. Jumbled streams of imagery and noise emissions engulf the space in obscure, but familiar messages, offering a portal into narratives that embody intersections between and across gendered associations that are culturally attributed to the mechanical. And, engaging directly with both personal and collective histories, this project examines the complex web of influences that have shaped both real and imagined relationships between human and non-human beings and objects.
The installation in Locust Projects’ Project Room allows visitors to enter an alternate plane of reality, where a distant and mysterious machine known as the Rocket with Hoopskirt is in a perpetual state of pre-departure, monitored from across the country. As a component of my ongoing Gendered Machines focus, the project centers on the 1928 test flight of the “hoopskirt” rocket, a liquid-fueled invention by rocketry pioneer, Robert H. Goddard. The site-specific construction addresses the role that Florida itself has played in the history of rocketry and the impact the project of space travel has made on the state’s cultural, political, economic, and physical landscape.
Built from found and recycled materials, the installation reimagines systems of control by inviting engagement yet denying manipulation. Jumbled streams of imagery and noise emissions engulf the space in obscure, but familiar messages, offering a portal into narratives that embody intersections between and across gendered associations that are culturally attributed to the mechanical. And, engaging directly with both personal and collective histories, this project examines the complex web of influences that have shaped both real and imagined relationships between human and non-human beings and objects.