Rocket With Hoopskirt Command Center
2-Part Installation Series
Through collaboration with my grandfather and space travel engineer, Don Payne, the Rocket with Hoopskirt Installation represents the the culmination of my graduate work regarding cultural impacts on the construction of identities in relation to mechanical objects. The “Command Center” installation acts as the work’s direct extension, continuing the discourse it generates from across the country, addressing the role that Florida 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.
Command Center, July 2019
Multi-media immersive installation (Found objects, electronic equipment, collaged archive footage, illustration, video collage projection and display, immersive soundscape score)
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.
Rocket with Hoopskirt, 2019
16'x5'x5', Found objects, welded steel apparatus, screen printed textile
Site-specific installation constructed for the 2019 MFA Exhibition at SFAI's Fort Mason Campus
Designed, coordinated, and fabricated by Whitney Humphreys
Engineering design consultation provided from Don Payne
Installation and fabrication support provided from Robin Beard and Thomas Van Houten
The central piece in my contribution to the May 2019 MFA Exhibition at SFAI's Fort Mason campus and a pivotal figure within my ongoing thesis research entitled Gendered Machines, this object offers alien modes of gender representation, which disrupt expected relationships between humans and mechanical beings. The rocket armature stands 16’ tall and is 5’ in diameter at the widest point, and is made from welded steel rod which detach and reassemble. The piece's title, “Rocket with Hoopskirt,” references its namesake, an early engine test, featuring structural hoops, built in 1928 by rocketry pioneer Robert H. Goddard. Unlike the original on which it is based, my rocket wears a 12’ long skirt made from a sheer, printed patterned fabric sewn to fit the structure like a body in a crinoline. The Perpetual Frontier Textile features a collage of found, manipulated, and illustrated imagery, patterned over transparent material. Stitched into the continuous loops, the layers of overlapping iconography offer alternative perspectives, disrupting the certainty of linear time. In a perpetual representation of territory, who's frontier is in an impossibly constant state of extension, this textile reflects fantasies of limitless expansion.