on the ground, in the air, across the water

on the ground, in the air, across the water is a video projection installation created using the video game engine Unreal. The video was created by scanning various botanical gardens around Turtle Island, creating a doubly-artificial landscape that the video game camera moves through. The botanical garden scans were created using a 3D scanning process known as gaussian splatting.

As the viewer is guided through this virtual environment, a narrative unfolds detailing a real-life forest fire that occurred in Arizona in 2018. The forest fire was caused by a U.S. border patrol officer who created an explosion for his future child’s gender reveal. The officer set up an explosive filled with baby blue powder and shot it in a dry, combustible forested area. The explosive was Tannerite, a combination of oxidizers and fuel known as a binary explosive. The video then connects this gender reveal forest fire to the fires that happened last year in Kjipuktuk, and describes a smartphone’s camera technology that fails to properly capture a nature in crisis.

Framing the video projection are multiple inflatables of various extinct flowers, digitally modeled and then rendered into inflating objects. As the ten-minute video plays, these representations of now-extinct flowers slowly raise and deflate and various rhythms, like a final attempt at resuscitation.

The title of the work is taken from the U.S. Customs and Border career listings page, where the phrase “on the ground, in the air, across the water” is repeated throughout, framing the artificial preservation of borders as something elemental and omnipresent. The video work seeks to connect the ways in which the languages technologies we deploy each day frame, shape, and limit our worldview.