Detail image of Avalanche enhanced water beverage


Photo documentation of Avalanche performance


Photo documentation of Avalanche vending machine

Avalanche is an enhanced water beverage filtered through a human pipeline that traces the flow of water through a city and through the body. A live performance presents municipal water usage as a literal concert of bodies, a system that is improbable, arduous, and flawed. The Avalanche bottling process begins with an ice cap harvested from the Never Summer Mountain Range. The ice melts and travels through a series of human filters, eventually collecting in crystal singing bowls. The sound of this filtration is performed as a concert for a live audience, while at the same time being live broadcast back to the mountain range, causing an avalanche from the vibration of sound waves. The avalanche is bottled for consumption, while also providing new ice to begin the process again. 

The project consists of a one night live performance, multi-channel video and vending machine stocked with Avalanche water, all of which work together to create a mythology of the product’s “source.” Passing water between the city and the mountain in an endless feedback loop, IfNf's filtration process equates the mountain spring with the trickle of water across a dirty windshield, the tears of two middle-aged men, the gargle and spit from a teenager’s mouth—juxtaposing trivial everyday gestures with the looming, dark future of a changing climate.


Avalanche performers (left), Illustration of the water filtration process by Arthur Jones (right)


Credits
Avalanche is produced by Black Cube nomadic art museum in partnership with the Vicki Myhren Gallery
Institute for New Feeling Scott Andrew, Agnes Bolt, and Nina Sarnelle
Curator Cortney Lane Stell
Project Manager Hannah James
Sound Energy worker Ann Martin
Water Workers Danielle Cadwallader, Arlan Grover, Antonio Hermosillo, Conrad Mata, Tiffany Matheson, Brihtney O’Brien, Bob Pearlman, and Colin Ward
Installation Graham Eschen, Josh Gontdrez, and Lin Wen-Ben
Sound Reinforcement Mark McElwain, Sound Town
Camera Agnes Bolt, Ben Hernstrom, Dominique Lockhart, Dom Lock Aerials
Illustrator Arthur Jones
Special thanks Amanda Cerini, Dan Jacobs, Lauren Abman, Tikiz Shaved Ice & Ice Cream, Dom Lock Aerials, Derrick Velasquez, Gretchen Schaefer, Denver Wastewater, and Biennial of the Americas.

Furthering Cream
accelerant for the face and body

An aging cream grown, harvested & packaged at IfNf labs in Southern California. A demo of the production process was exhibited in MAXIMUM MINIMUM IN UNUM at the Miller Gallery, Pittsburgh PA.

The exhibition was accompanied by a Carnegie Mellon feature on the Institute for New Feeling.

Credits: 3D Animation by Gary Tyler, 2D Animation by Nina Sarnelle, Camera by Scott Andrew, Ben Hernstrom

Working with Le Jardin Essential--a massive community garden in Brussels, Belgium--we created a line of complex scents that bring together contrasting details of the social, psychological & physical environment around the garden. Each fragrance centers around one herb grown in the garden, and then builds around that molecule a network of human or urban additives derived from our research in the area. Above is an installation view of the final perfumes; below is an ingredient list for the 6 scents developed in collaboration with the Institute for Art & Olfaction (Los Angeles).

hit song: wintergreen, waffle batter lip gloss, bandaid, nail glue, cheap tank top, air conditioning, chlorine.
wifi: tarragon, burnt electrical cable, energy drink, mom’s shampoo, pomme frite slathered in sauce gribiche, bike ride at night.
contagion: thyme, oak and ash tree, bluberry donut vape juice, cat yawn, flock of parakeets in winter, sweaty volleyball players.
privacy: cumin, cement, lubricated condom, new lumber, breath, wet sweater, crisis in the bathroom at foret national.
stray: dandelion, dog, found wallet, methamphetamine, sleeping bag, children yelling, airplane exhaust.
eviction: chamomile, wine left out all night, unpaid gas bill, hole dug in the lawn, wet cardboard, spackle, spicy celery in harira soup.

Lens fabricated by Robb Godshaw

A custom line of contact lenses that modify both the way you look, and the way you look. Lens was exhibited in ‘MAKEOVER’ at Southern Exposure.

This video includes a preview of the installation and an excerpt from the video.

A sculpted ceramic plug-in air freshener that diffuses odorless Oxytocin into the air

A video advertisement for air freshener made with the product's prototype design

Edible ear plugs made from artisan-rolled Japanese mochi

An adhesive moleskin shoe insert that applies pressure-point therapy to the foot while walking

A weighted cement neck pillow to be used in-flight or at home