A show that flows
Multimedia exhibit highlights bayous’ influence on city
The concrete floors of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston’s Zilkha Gallery do not evoke nature. But a metaphorical waterway now runs along the dark walls of the subterranean space via “Whispering Bayou,” a multimedia installation that ripples across three video screens.
The continually changing pictures and sound float like a trio of watery, abstract tapestries. Their fiber, so to speak, melds video of Houston’s bayou-scapes with the faces and voices of dozens of Houstonians. The piece flows poetically and sometimes kaleidoscopically, digitally processed into psychedelic colors. The material hovers just long enough to be almost recognizable, creating a dreamy sensibility.
Approaching the screens, you dive even deeper: A camera behind you projects a hazy outline of your body in real time as if you’re a ghost creating shadows or holes through the multiple layers of video. It works almost intuitively, reading your movements to trigger changes in what you hear and see.
“By your position in space and the way you interact with the images and sounds, you actually control what is happening,” explained Frenchman JeanBaptiste Barrière, one of the installation’s three lead artists. “It develops with you and what you are doing. It’s exploring endlessly and recombining, depending on what you do in space and time.”
The seed of “Whispering Bayou” sprouted in 2009 when Houston artist Carroll Parrott Blue tagged along with a group of interns on a 14-hour bus tour of bayous from Houston to Galveston Bay. She was working on another project, but the trip spurred her imagination.
“I saw this whole natural environ-
ment we live in,” Blue said. “It’s a wonderful resource anybody can get to.”
While the Houston Parks Board’s Bayou Greenways project aims to connect the city’s waterways with hike-and-bike paths by 2020, much of Brays Bayou already is more accessible to the public than, say, the River Oaks portion of Buffalo Bayou. It also connects the dots to a compelling portrait of the city’s ethnic and economic diversity. Along its path, about 100 languages are spoken.
“A huge portion are people from other countries, including Latinos, Asians and Africans,” Blue said.
An award-winning filmmaker and interactive media producer, she invited pioneering composer George Lewis to help her create a digital project that would convey the city’s international spirit and celebrate its vast network of bayous.
“This whole business about digital has shifted who I am in a huge way. Now everybody’s a filmmaker,” Blue said. “So I encourage people to tell their own stories. ... We’re at a point when artists and audiences can have direct dialogues with each other.”
A music professor at Columbia University, Lewis has won MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships for his ground-breaking sound and technology work. Blue long has been inspired by his philosophy that everything we hear constitutes music — including the wind, bird song and voices.
Lewis brought on Barrière, another pioneering composer who specializes in interactive installations, to direct the visuals, shoot video of Houston’s bayous and create the motion-sensing elements.
After a year of discussion, they began filming last fall. A team of local collaborators recorded interviews with Houstonians about their experiences, memories and visions of the city’s past, present and future. They also asked people to sing and to say “whispering bayou” in their native languages. To date they’ve recorded 55 interviews in 39 languages as far-flung as Dahlik (from Eritrea), Gujarati (from the Indian state of Gujarat) and Kikongo (from the tropical forests of the Republic of Congo).
The interviews also explored spirituality and ethnicity, and everyone was asked to sing something.
“That’s part of the music of the piece,” Lewis said. “The initial conception was that there would be all these wonderful voices coming in. But it’s evolved to the state that what’s ‘whispering’ about it is that sounds are intermittent. There’s not sonic action happening all the time.”
More “whisps,” as Lewis calls the components, will be added during the show’s run: Anyone can upload videos, sound or photos to whisperingbayou.net, whose content the artists plan to incorporate.
“Whispering Bayou” took a village to create. Aside from the group who helped conduct and record interviews, Damon Holzborn worked with Lewis on sound design and smartphone interactions, Thomas Goephfer assisted Barrière with the shadowy visuals and interactive movement, and Jason Moran and David Dove provided music, additional sounds and interviews.
As whizzy as it sounds, “Whispering Bayou” is not about technology.
“From the beginning, we said this must be an emotional experience, to make Houstonians think about their city — what they feel about it, what they consider it is or should be,” Barrière said.
Blue, who envisions art as a catalyst for more community work along Houston’s bayous, hopes viewers will appreciate “the challenge they have to make this an international city for everyone,” she said.
Lewis was pleased the installation seemed intimate. “It does sound a bit odd from time to time,” he said, letting out a big, deep laugh. He wants people to see themselves in “Whispering Bayou” and have a sense of empathy.
“There’s not much to do with a piece like this. You don’t have to manipulate it or try to perform with it or control it. If you are yourself, the piece will reveal itself,” he said. “Viewers and the piece work together to create an experience. That’s what’s great about this kind of work.”