F. C. Zuke

I am currently working between Autodesk Maya and the Unity game engine to create a work that investigates radio silence and the ways that radio broadcasters use silence in the dissemination of their messages. As part of this project, I created a program called Silence Observation System (SOS) that analyzes an audio signal for moments of silence and records what happens before, during, and after these instances. The audio collected from this tool will be used in the sound design of the work. I am currently using Unity to export frames to be used in a short animated film, but I am also exploring possibilities for how this virtual world might be explored through a VR headset or other more interactive situations.

This work emerged from our investigation of fragile states within and beyond our own lived experiences. We wrote a series of poems and short stories, weaving the characters and ideas into a narrative that relates both to us and to something greater. The spoken words in the work were written by Aine E. Nakamura. This text was inspired by the seasonal and temporal changes experienced in a body in recovery; the poetry acts as a translation of the essential solitude in life; the dream of attaining success and the realization through everyday errands and some pauses. Nakamura, along with Claire Igawa and Christian Preski, created audiovisual material that was edited and arranged by F. C. Zuke. Through this method, we constructed a narrative comprised of our individual stories and ideas. The photographs, videos, music, and sounds used in the work were recorded by group members in Japan, the United States, and throughout their travels. The visual aspect of the story is told through a web of branches, abstracted indoor settings, and Nakamura’s performance. An eclectic soundscape of vocal, electric, and acoustic sounds paint the complexity and ambiguity of a dreamstate.

Light Thing is a photograph from a series of images that explores abstraction as found in the natural world. A telephoto lens was used to situate the viewer within a density of branches while facing the setting sun.

Text from waeliwang.com: “In an uptick of domestic violence during COVID-19, especially within police households, how do we keep each other safe, signal, reveal, and bring to justice the abusers? An experimental screendance working with collaborative, contemporary movement language in exploration of who we are in relationship to one another and to ourselves. How do we weave, break, let go of what is/was?”

The Word That Binds Them invites viewers to gently interact with twelve famous books. As viewers open the books, voices from inside each book’s pages begin speaking. These voices belong to the books’ authors and figures who hold positions of power in promoting each book’s teachings. Some of these individuals include occultist Aleister Crowley, members of the 113th United States Congress, author Ayn Rand, Chairman Mao Zedong, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the Saudi Imam and Qur’an reciter Maher Al Mueaqly, Christian clergy members, and Jewish rabbis.

This work began with an examination of books that have been elevated to a sacred or authoritative status by religious, political, and academic systems. After several weeks of analyzing the texts by conducting word frequency counts, and after studying these results for trends, discrepancies, and oddities, there was a single word that appeared more consistently in all the books than any other word: power. Each sentence, phrase, and quotation containing the word ‘power’ was extracted. This resulted in a collection of over 3000 excerpts. During the installation, pages containing these passages rain down from above, but these pages contain no information about the book to which each passage belongs. Without knowing the source of each quotation, audiences are left to navigate these fragments without usual cultural and ideological presuppositions.

The Word That Binds Them can be installed in several different forms and configurations. In March 2020, the work was included as part of the between Gods & Dogs exhibition in Lawrence, Kansas. The books in this installation included:

The I Ching, trans. by Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes
The Tanakh, trans. by the Jewish Publication Society of America
The Holy Bible, King James Version
The Holy Quran, trans. Abdullah Yusuf Ali
The U. S. Constitution, 1787
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848
Das Kapital, Vol. 1, Karl Marx, edited by Friedrich Engels, 1867
On the Origin of Species by Means of Nat. Sel., Charles Darwin, 1859
Magick in Theory and Practice, Aleistor Crowley, 1929
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, 1957
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Mao Zedong, 1964
Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault, 1975

Most Retrieved Words began through engagements with the general public and by asking dog-owners the question, “What have you learned from your dog?” Participants were also asked to submit short audio clips of their dogs barking. This material was used to position dogs as valid sources of knowledge, wisdom, and power. The sounds of the dogs were manipulated to mimic the spacious reverberations of sacred architecture. In this way, the gallery takes on sacred sonic qualities and dogs take on the role of choir members. The visual content in the work contains hundreds of videos of running dogs that were extracted from found footage. These four-legged figures appear as ghostly, supernatural, and regal. The work fits well in a branch of research known as "canine studies", and was partly inspired by the work of groups such as the Duke University Canine Cognition Center and the Bergin University of Canine Studies.

The work functions best in an immersive, multi-projection installation space. Accompanying the audiovisual material is a list of words that appeared most frequently in the general public's response to "What have you learned from your dog?" These words act as evidence that dogs can be an alternative to anthropocentric sources of belief and knowledge. The 250 most popular words from the responses to "what have you learned from your dog?" are as follows:

love, me, taught, unconditional, patience, life, time, always, no, truth, trust, people, loyalty, contain, imagine, more, know, live, enjoy, unconditionally, god, now, matter, never, family, years, better, care, good, happy, loyal, need, friend, give, humans, feel, tail, kids, patient, everything, times, came, left, compassion, home, happiness, think, going, walk, old, kind, children, play, hard, look, attention, comfort, meaning, fun, fur, small, kindness, food, gift, outside, guardians, walks, pure, responsibility, myself, worth, world, earth, above, forgiveness, amazing, peace, nature, laugh, outdoor, important, animals, acceptance, stay, greatest, keep, gave, rescue, takes, human, wrong, lost, greet, gives, hope, moments, devotion, reminder, miss, companionship, thank, rescued, want, gentle, smell, sad, eyes, beloved, house, creatures, sick, elderly, anxiety, once, passed, thought, friends, respect, lucky, scratch, long, special, head, deeply, help, sometimes, riddle, boundaries, catch, complete, days, friendship, mind, puppy, playing, wagging, running, real, ride, together, laughter, roll, eat, smart, alone, wag, wet, why, support, compassionate, free, perfect, empathy, full, unselfish, sense, relationships, adopted, past, forever, saved, working, call, calm, weather, energy, protecting, devote, exceptional, awful, sharing, follow, heaven, death, value, intuitive, legs, blessed, wonderful, health, experienced, strong, instincts, hate, hear, enthusiasm, commitment, speak, beautiful, study, hurt, scary, lesson, bones, angels, sleep, perseverance, control, minds, ourselves, dignity, age, greater, stressful, cry, relationship, end, experience, giving, companions, caring, snuggles, medication, welcome, chase, please, persistence, conversation, creature, feelings, honored, honest, tears, ability, adopt, choir, guard, surprised, teeth, annoyed, impulsively, connected, presence, celebrate, future, mouth, affection, guide, sensitivity, believing, potential, transform, independence, listening, resilience, reason, trained, focused, unconstitutional, faithfulness

All of Me is a documentary based on artists who are also mothers. The film contains a series of interviews and discussions with artist-mothers talking about the challenges and joys of motherhood and their strategies to make parenthood compatible with their professions as artists. The film was produced at the first Artist-Parent Residency at Elsewhere Studios in Paonia, Colorado. My responsibilities in the project have included filming, editing, sound design, and other post-production tasks.

A New Word presents viewers with a seemingly simple question: “What do you believe?” The work began by acquiring an empty book and filled two pages with sacred text and then erasing the text. What remained on the pages was fragments of sacred phrases and a partially erased heading: “Instruction for Believers.” This prescriptive phrase was replaced with an invitation and question: “What Do You Believe?”

Viewers respond through one of several computer interfaces, one word at a time. As each user submits a word, their word is added to a book in front of them and the books of all other users. This communal process results in an amalgam of phrases and sentences that reflect the collective beliefs of all those who participated.

Typed words are converted to speech in real time, keystrokes are translated to organ, voice, and bell sounds, and music is generated according to the responses of visitors. As participants type, each keystroke triggers melodies from celebrated Western sacred music played in retrograde and inversion. A New Word allows for individuals to express their beliefs while a highly responsive system translates their input into a complex musical orchestration that blurs the sacred and the secular. The system is highly reactive to participants’ typing, which allows individuals with little musical ability to become performers and collaborators in the work.

Superior Pattern Processing is an interactive audiovisual space where visitors attempt to solve patterns. Based on their responses, the room transforms with changes in videos and sounds. When enough patterns have been solved correctly or incorrectly, the room reaches one of two climaxes: "Wakefulness" or "The Delta Wave." The work questions the "superior pattern processing" ability of humans by providing a kind of intelligence test that leaves participants questioning the impact of their choices while immersed in multiple projections, a computer network, and a clinical, cerebral soundscape emitting from a sound system placed around the perimeter of the room. Participants have a choice between attempting to solve patterns correctly or sabotaging the system by choosing obviously incorrect answers. In this way, audience members choose to either comply with or subvert the rules.

The images and sounds in the work are based on intricate and complex patterns. These sequences become so complex that, at some point, they cease to be recognized as patterns. In this way, the work poses the question, “At what moment do patterns become so complex that we stop calling them patterns?”

Actual Artist Statement Generator asks viewers to submit a drawing of their own. The program analyzes their drawing and produces an artist statement based on the analysis. All of the language, vocabulary, and phrases used to generate each statement were taken from actual artist statements. The work parodies the verbose language artists sometimes use to describe their practice, but it also reveals something about the ambiguity of language itself.

Bind is an interactive video that examines the artist-viewer relationship. As viewers approach the work, they see someone sitting across from them, perusing a large, cumbersome book. As the reader on screen moves through the pages of the book, he encounters something strange, yet familiar. Viewers discover their very own image among the pages of the book and momentarily become literary subjects.

Liminal Senses explores the intersection of human and machine bodies. The visual material is comprised of fragmented body parts, nature footage, and close-ups of a robot built by the artist. The sounds in the work were collected from field recordings of wind and electronic sounds discovered through disassembling electronic devices and hacking their circuit boards.

This interactive sculpture is a distressed cardboard box with flaps that viewers can open, peer into, and close. My first creative outlet was the guitar. Before studying music composition and art, I studied guitar performance. A severe repetitive stress injury forced me to give up the instrument. For A Voice Confined, I took one of my first guitars and subjected it to a destructive process by scorching, burning, stomping on, scraping, bending, twisting, dropping, and crushing the object. Using piezo contact microphones, I recorded the sounds of this process as heard and felt through the wooden body of the instrument. Interaction with each specific flap triggers individual sounds which resonate from within. As participants interact with the object, they layer and combine sounds of destruction as if they were playing a musical instrument.

A “vocal portrait” of the voice of Art Bell, a radio broadcaster who is most known for founding and hosting the paranormal overnight radio show Coast to Coast AM. The image is based on a spectrogram analysis of the late broadcaster's voice. This image was captured during his signature nightly welcome, "From the high desert, and the great American Southwest...” This work puts the human voice in the context of portraiture and draws attention to the role that voice plays in defining our self-image.

Someone Must Look is an audiovisual work that requires the presence of at least one viewer. Viewers trigger the work when they enter the room and sit in a chair. The work addresses authority figures who amass power by exclaiming others to be defective. Audience members experience a transition from being viewers to being subjects as a camera captures their face, puts them in the video, and the narrator begins to address them personally.