Emerald Holt: The Voice Of The Land

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Emerald Holt, "The Voice of the Land," 2020-21

audio and visual installation

Emerald Holt: The Voice Of The Land

The Voice of the Land brings together the rich tapestry of sounds and visuals from the local natural landscape through real-time audiovisual processing. Emerald Holt created a unique personal view of the Okanagan environment through an exhibition that becomes a vessel for collaborative and poetic exchange and opens meaningful approaches for shared or individual appreciation of our local sonic and visual landscape through visual music expressions.

Visually, The Okanagan landscape is abstracted and pieced together in a variety of simultaneous video streams from multiple viewpoints, each one projected on multiple screens installed in the gallery space, to create a depth of field and perception in time and space. This visual technique Holt employs is similar to David Hockney’s Joiners, which are like a temporal montage of shifting footage, and puzzles viewers with anticipation in a similar experience of being in nature. The screens are hung in shapes and patterns that correspond to non-representational musical expressions similar to Wassily Kandinsky, but use visual material derived from the landscape. The type of field research that Holt carried out is essential for developing an experienced understanding of the Okanagan typography, and each screen reveals a specific location, whether it be from local creeks, lakes, or ponds. Each place inspired Holts interest in the diverse experiences of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.