UNDERWATER NOISE OF RAIN

LANE HALL, LISA MOLINE

Underwater Noise of Rain is a video and sound installation. Its subject is plankton and zooplankton (primarily freshwater Copepods), bellwether organisms whose populations are indicators of the health of our ecosystem. Underwater Noise of Rain uses explorations of scale to allow otherwise-invisible water animals to occupy the same corporeal space as the viewer, radically repositioning the human in relation to the nearly invisible water creatures. What is tiny becomes monumental, monstrous, and haunting. The artwork explores issues of scale and representation of invisible nature. Composed of connected fragments, the installation inverts relationships between microcosm and macrocosm. The source of the film and video footage is the archive of Dr. Rudi Strickler, biologist and Distinguished Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Water Institute.