Melt Me Into The Ocean Walk

Melt Me Into The Ocean, a day-long event that uses sound to connect participants to this sense of place, commissioned by Madison Heying of Indexical. — Melt Me Into The Ocean, a day-long event that uses sound to connect participants to this sense of place, commissioned by Madison Heying of Indexical.

Nestled on the edge of the Monterey Bay between the Pacific Ocean and the redwoods, a strong sense of place emanates throughout Santa Cruz. Melt Me Into The Ocean is a day-long event that uses sound to connect participants to this sense of place, commissioned by Madison Heying of Indexical.

Melt Me Into The Ocean features participatory works by local and nationally renowned artists that use sound, images, technology, and their bodies to activate public spaces including the West Jetty Walkway, Seabright Beach, and Ocean View Park, to reveal new facets of our relationships to local ecosystems and environments.

The centerpiece of the festival is a new piece by sound artist Yolande Harris, which employs underwater recordings—of whales and other creatures—from the Monterey Bay. Part I of the work begins with a guided listening sound walk on the West Jetty Parkway in the Santa Cruz Harbor. Part II will close out the festival at sunset: a performance in Ocean View Park featuring underwater recordings, projections of whales in the water, and live instruments. In Harris’s words, this work explores “the experience of color, sound, and environment as ‘polymorphous magical substance’ and the ocean as energy-exchange or ‘chi.’”

What pulls us to the ocean? And when we arrive at its edge, what do we experience? Melt Me Into the Ocean imagines a deeper dive at the point where land and sea meet, bringing sounds up from under the surface, filling our air space with liquid motion from beneath the ocean. And while we look out at the surface of the ocean, feet on the land, ears underwater, how does our sense of place expand to integrate the submarine world into the presence of our imagination? By engaging with a sound walk to the Walton Lighthouse while listening to a collage of underwater field recordings of the Monterey Bay, in Part I, and a sound and video installation in Ocean View Park in Part II, Melt Me Into The Ocean explores how we can deepen our relationship to the ocean and environment through art, science, and listening. More info at Indexical https://www.indexical.org/events/2018-08-11-melt-me-into-the-ocean