Take a Walk Around Chilmark, MA

The photo I interpreted [from stop 1] seemed quiet and serene but had a hint of hidden darkness. I was really drawn to the contrast between the cliff and the water. Something so rough plotted against something so smooth resulted in a perfect balance. I wanted to write in a minor key but have uplifting lyrics to balance out the light and dark moods. The song is indicative that someday I will find a woman that I will love limitlessness and in return, she will love me the same way.  It’s a story of episodes starting with travel and ending with commitment.

For me, the song I interpreted [from stop 2] speaks to the fragility of human relationships, the obsolescence of devotion, and the frail notion of forever. Having just experienced love and the pain of its loss shortly before the conception of this piece, the work comes from a place of melancholic acceptance. In my interpretation, a lake in the distance drains slowly into an empty pool where a woman alone stands, as the water level rises her fate becomes increasingly hinged on how quickly she learns how to swim.

Miriam interpreted the photograph from stop 3 and created a perfume in response.

Description of Olfactory: I imagined the ocean (a brackish, vegetal version) and dry grasses, and chlorine. I wanted to make the perfume on the woodier side and not introduce anything too floral, although there is some tuberose. It’s mostly woods and herbals such as lavender, plus citrus and quite a bit of seaweed absolute. I experimented with a chlorine aspect but decided against it. Overall, I was strongly influenced by the grassy area of the photograph for this fragrance.

If I had to sum up the photo I interpreted in one word I’d say “Domestication.” The subject appears at first to be the woman standing in the pool, but after careful consideration, it is not clear that she really is the main subject, since the landscape overwhelms her in physical and possibly emotional terms. It is also difficult to read her facial expression, adding to the impression that she is a prop, a needed vertical element, rather than a fully-fledged human subject. The angle of the shot, with the photographer positioned above the pool/woman, combined with the pool appearing within a mostly natural landscape, led me to think about domestication and domesticity (applied to people and land). Working with the domesticity/domestication concept, I was thinking of ways to incorporate the height differential between the photographer and the woman in the pool. I came up with the idea of using native birds (a birds-eye view of the photographer represented by a hawk compared with a smaller (and non-raptor) female quail who is positioned at or below ground level). This refers to the woman in the photo seeming marginalized and the photographer, who I determined to be male, dominating and domesticating her. I also felt this trespassing vibe (that the photographer may have snuck into someone else’s property to take the photo) that I recreated with the birds trespassing on the vacated cat’s home. Ultimately the hawk has left and only the little quail remains.