Looking Outwards / Brian House

Brian House is an accomplished artist working with ‘human and nonhuman systems’ to create works that translate data into visual and audible experiences. He studied at multiple universities, earning degrees in Computer Science and Computer Music/Multimedia [Columbia (bachelors), Chalmers tekniska högskola (masters), and Brown (PhD)], and is currently an art professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland.

House’s methods of data collection, as well as his productions, are multidisciplinary, focusing not only on the existing rhythms and natural trends of environmental dynamics but on the human impacts on these trends. His work spans past, present, and future, visual art, music, and technology. Much of his work– if not, all– is focused on emphasizing the importance of environmental awareness. Despite being grounded in science and data collection, these works are historically, culturally, and politically aware. When speaking about his work, House tends to provide such context prior to explanations of a given project’s approach, method, objective, and result. His speech for Eyeo 2018 opened with an acknowledgment of the Indigenous land upon which the venue was built. I admire the conscientiousness in both his work and his presentations, as well as the common thread of translating the world around us into something we can hear. House’s projects are extremely powerful, moving, and at the same time, more educational than I had expected.

My favorite project of his is Animas (2017). The objective of this work was to convert the real-time fluctuations of the Animas river’s heavy metal content into audible vibrational tones. Collecting data through water sensors installed in the river, House suspended sheets of the four heavy metals which had surpassed safe levels in the Animas. Each sheet was rigged with a sensor and amplifier which projected the individual frequencies of the metals in correspondence with their level fluctuations in the Animas.