Christina McPhee, Jeremy Hight, Sindee Nakatani: Carrizo-Parkfield Diaries
March 2005
Christina McPhee, Jeremy Hight, Sindee Nakatani: Carrizo-Parkfield Diaries
Carrizo-Parkfield Diaries by Christina McPhee, Jeremy Hight, and Sindee Nakatani is a collection of “data diaries” that utilize data from an active seismic landscape and its historical record. The work originally compiled live, hourly seismic measurements in fault zones in central California—from Carrizo Plains (about 150 miles north of Los Angeles) to the nearby town of Parkfield—into number sequences flashing on the screen that would then “crash” into an archived database that plotted a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in Parkfield on September 28, 2004. The colliding numbers trigger movie clips with sound, text, and visual narratives collaged into a cinematic notebook. Simulating field notes, the fragmentary pages capture an intangible, local sense of place in contrast with the data reality of the continuous seismic activity. The tectonic activity becomes a metaphor for human memory, mapping the geological terrain as a site of remembrance. The project ran from March 5 to September 22, 2005; the live data diaries have been replaced with an archived version.
Flash programming by Sindee Nakatani.
Christina McPhee (b. 1954; Pomona, California) is a multimedia artist whose forensic observations layer visual, sonic, scientific, and poetic data within drawing, painting, video, and photography. In collaboration with sound artists, poets, composers, and field research scientists, she creates works for performance, installation, and exhibition, especially concerning climate futures, environmental histories, and spirituality. Her performances, video, and net art have been shown in exhibitions, festivals, and electronic media archives around the world, including Cybersonica/Convergence, Institute of Contemporary Arts New Media Center, London; California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside; back_up/Lounge|lab, Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany; Victoria Film Festival, British Columbia; FILE Electronic Language International Festival, Brazil; and Digital Arts and Culture (DAC), Melbourne, Australia.
Jeremy Hight (1969–2022) was an artist, information designer, writer, editor, and theorist who shaped the field of locative narratives. Integrating unseen histories, and human interaction with city space and GPS, Hight collaborated with artists Naomi Spellman and Jeff Knowlton on the project 34N118W (2002) in downtown Los Angeles, which won the grand jury prize at the AIM (Art in Motion) IV: Interference Patterns Festival of Time-Based Media (2003). He also was new media curator of the online version of the MIT Press journal Leonardo. His works have been shown in museums, galleries, and festivals internationally. He published dozens of essays, articles, and book chapters on locative media, new media, augmented reality, interface design, spatial internet applications, and language theory.
Gate Pages
Every month from March 2001 to February 2006, the Whitney invited an artist or collective to present their work in the form of a “Gate Page” on artport. Each page was meant to function as a portal to the artist’s own sites and projects. The Gate Pages comprise a range of artistic approaches to the format—while some of them are designed as entry points to the respective artist’s website or promote a recently launched work, others take the form of a more complex stand-alone project.
Wherever necessary and possible, these works are made functional through emulation and reconstructions from the Internet Archive. Not all of them have been restored to their original state and their conservation is ongoing. You can also view the original Gate Pages archive to see how they were presented at the time of their creation.
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