Art + Design / General Non-Fiction

Wetland Project

Explorations in Sound, Ecology and Post-Geographical Art

Brady Marks, Mark Timmings

Awarded first prize in the pictorial category at the 2022 Alcuin Awards for Excellence in Book Design

Recipient of the 2023 Canadian Printing Award in the Hardcover Offset category

Featuring contributions by novelist William Gibson, MP and former Green Party leader Elizabeth May, poet and spoken-word performer Susan McMaster, musicologist Stephen Morris, writer Alex Muir, poet and W̱SÁNEĆ First Nation member Philip Kevin Paul, Stó:lō artist, curator, and scholar Dylan Robinson, sound artist and World Soundscape Project member Hildegard Westerkamp, and curator, writer, and PhD student Laurie White. Photographs by Nancy Angermeyer.

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Book Description

The Wetland Project book is the print component of a multidisciplinary and multimedia project centred on the sounds emanating from the ṮEḴTEḴSEN marsh, in unceded W̱SÁNEĆ territory (Saturna Island, British Columbia). The book is edited by artists Brady Marks and Mark Timmings, who have been inspired by the sonic phenomena produced by this small patch of Earth to create a 24-hour Slow Radio Broadcast, based on field recordings from the marsh, that radio stations across North America and Europe have aired on Earth Day since 2017; a musical arrangement titled Wetland Senario, co-composed with Stephen Morris and performed by vocal ensemble musica intima; and a new media installation that algorithmically transforms sound frequencies from the marsh recordings into pure colour fields in flux.

The algorithmic flow of colour fields throughout the publication combined with photos of the project and an audio interface accessed using smartphones and tablet devices will give the book a colourful, music box-like quality.

Download the French translation of Wetland Project here

Author

Brady Marks is a digital media artist working primarily in audiovisual practices, new media and kinetic art. She has collaborated with Geoffrey Farmer on seven works, including “And Finally The Street Becomes The Main Character (Clock)” (2005–2008), a sculptural installation with computer-generated sound presented and acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario; and “Let’s Make the Water Turn Black” (2013–15), a 24-hour computer-generated installation composed of 50 light fixtures, 26 audio speakers and 18 synchronized, animatronic sculptures presented at REDCAT (Los Angeles), Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst (Zurich), Nottingham Contemporary (UK), Kunstverein (Hamburg), Pérez Art Museum (Miami) and the Vancouver Art Gallery.

More About Brady Marks

Mark Timmings is a multidisciplinary artist and acclaimed graphic designer. In 2015, an audio installation of Narvaez Bay, including Timmings’s monumental illuminated score and a recording of the Vancouver performance, was exhibited in Montreal at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain. He has received over 100 awards for his publication designs and has collaborated on artist book projects with Roy Arden, Christi Belcourt, Cedric Bomford, Shary Boyle, Hank Bull, Geoffrey Farmer, Robert Houle, Eleanor King and Etienne Zack. He lives and works on Saturna Island, British Columbia.

More About Mark Timmings

Press

“As a book, Wetland Project is an ecological adventure that doesn’t recognize the limits of the traditional print format”
photoED Magazine

“Wetland Project is a book that immediately engages the senses.”
BC Studies

Book details and launch event
BC Booklook

“Wetland Project is no ordinary book.”
Galleries West

“A science fiction novelist, a sound artist, and a Member of Parliament walk into a marsh—and that’s not the set-up for a joke. It’s the modus operandi of the beautifully designed multimedia book Wetland Project: Explorations in Sound, Ecology and Post-Geographical Art.”
Wire Magazine

“The gorgeous and highly colorful volume . . .”
Disquiet

“Could this be a new form of impressionism? At the Canadian Cultural Centre, three artists (Brady Marks, Mark Timmings and Stephen Morris) portray a place, the ṮEḴTEḴSEN marsh in British Columbia (Canada), through an immersive sound and visual installation. In other words, they reinvent landscape painting by inviting the visitor to a complete, sensitive and troubling low-tech experience. A very beautiful project, which is part of an acoustic ecology approach and wants to raise awareness of the preservation of wetlands.”
Beaux Arts Magazine

Wetland project. Le marais de Tekteksen
Télérama

Les meilleures expositions à Paris en mai 2023
Télérama

The British Columbia Review

“The book is an art object in itself. ”
Juliana Rupchan

Praise

“The Wetland Project is a beautiful, quietly amazing work of micro-post-geographical art that allows us to be wherever we are and somewhere wonderfully natural and real, simultaneously. It’s an experience I wish everyone could have, and I wish there were more experiences like it.”

—William Gibson

Figure 1 Publishing

Art + Design / General Non-Fiction

Wetland Project

Explorations in Sound, Ecology and Post-Geographical Art

Brady Marks, Mark Timmings

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