801 Salon No. 19: Future Views

Future Views is a visual and auditory exploration of partial perspectives of Utah’s terrain, created by Katrina Ricks Peterson and Andrew Aguilera. This work focuses on alternative ways of seeing and knowing Utah’s landscape, with an emphasis on the situated, the localized, and the up-close.
“How to see? Where to see from? What limits to vision? What to see for? Whom to see with? Who gets to have more than one point of view? Who interprets the visual field? What other sensory powers do we wish to cultivate besides vision?”
– Donna Haraway [1]

Working with manipulated photographs of Utah’s spatial landscape that have been translated into aluminum engravings, Peterson challenges the totalizing views of nature from above represented by maps and aerial photographs, opting instead for “views from somewhere” [2]. Unlike topographical maps, Peterson’s engravings offer alternative, localized views of Utah’s landscape: a piece of tree bark covered in termite lines, cracked rock faces, droplets from a waterfall. Using a process that requires high levels of both human and machine manipulation, Peterson’s work emphasizes the active role of the viewer in producing these perspectives.

Through a series of auditory explorations in conversation with Peterson’s work, Aguilera similarly seeks to produce alternative ways of knowing Utah’s terrain. In this work, Aguilera processes live analog signals from synths and manipulates them through digital reverbs and software, generating an eerie and lush sonic landscape to become the soundtrack to the space. Music becomes a part of the piece itself, and must be “custom made”  for the viewing. Like Peterson, his process relies on high levels of human and machine manipulation, emphasizing the agency of the viewer in producing knowledge.

The work is being exhibited at 801 Salon on March 18th, 2023 from 7-10pm. Pieces will be available for purchase. Special designed tape cassettes featuring the raw music from the event with a custom engraved metal plate will also be available.