Projection, acrylic, medicine cabinet, aircraft cable, audio

18 x 20 x 17 in

2:00

Untitled Floating House began as a reflection on the forces that continue to threaten my family’s house in Pocasset, Massachusetts, particularly climate change and water contamination. The house is in a low-lying area less than a mile from the ocean, and rising sea levels threaten to submerge the property within my lifetime. This project became a process of confronting the possibility that I could be the last generation in my family to enjoy this place in the way that multiple generations have been able to. Increasingly intense weather events recently left the house without electricity, heat, and internet for multiple weeks. This came at a time when the house’s water supply was in the middle of being replaced after it had been contaminated by jet fuel from a nearby military base. Creating this installation was an attempt to create an idealized version of the house that would float off of the ground so as to be safe from these threatening forces. When you walk closer to the piece, the air displaced by your presence begins to make the house move back and forth slightly as it hangs from two pieces of aircraft cable. This causes the projection to distort slightly as if the house is floating on water. These qualities of the installation reveal the underlying fragility and precarity not just of the place itself, but my ability to preserve it.

My father currently lives in this house, as his mother and grandparents did before him. He took the photos that are projected onto the surfaces of the installation. In this way, this ongoing project becomes an act of intergenerational collaboration and an activation of the intergenerational bonds that connect me to the house and its history.

The installation was created by projection mapping onto the inner surfaces of the hollow house structure. This was originally done by simply pointing a projector straight up underneath the structure, which hangs from the ceiling and then mapping the images onto the projected surface using after effects. The medicine cabinet mirror was later added to add flexibility in the installation process, as it allows for a larger distance between the projector and the structure, and allows for more adjustments to be made after the structure is hung.