When Dreams Are Reality
Cristóbal Martínez
A Generative Sound Art Installation
March 6th - May 1st, 2021
photocredit: Ian Montgomery, 2018
Cristóbal Martínez, When Dreams Are Reality, Installation View
The artist invites you to listen to a stereophonic representation of the quadraphonic installation that was featured at Telematic
When Dreams Are Reality is an immersive quadraphonic sound installation and character fiction, constructed as a memory of the 2018 Camp Fire and a reflection on our ideological response to the climate catastrophe.
In our SOMA West gallery
323 10th St. @ Folsom
San Francisco, CA
Tuesday - Friday, 11:00 - 4:00
or by appointment
with
On-Line Releases of Stereo Sound Sculptures
every two weeks, Wednesdays, throughout the run of the show
(co-presented with Gray Area)
Telematic, Gray Area, and the artist invite you to listen to the following using a pair of headphones, earbuds, or a set of nice speakers in order to better experience the audio fidelity of this work.
Additional Sound Works Featured Online During the Exhibition
Brutal Streets
Like Black Lung
The Interiority of Orange, Red, and Yellow
Nerve Impulses While Under
On November 8, 2018, the deadliest fire in the history of California came to life northeast of Chico in the drought-stricken Sierra foothills. This event, known as the Camp Fire, ripped through over 153,336 acres of land, destroyed 12,637 homes, left tens of thousands of people homeless, and killed 85 people. Most of this destruction occurred within just four hours of the fire starting. Days later the specter of this fire would descend upon the City of San Francisco, CA.
Two years later smoke returned to haunt San Francisco. On September 9-12, 2020, a group of Northern California wildfires canvased the city with plumes of smoke and red, orange, and yellow skies. This infernal season burned over four million acres (6,250 square miles) of land, taking hundreds of homes and 31 lives. Scientific research suggests that the burning is tied to higher temperatures due to climate change.
When Dreams Are Reality is an immersive, quadraphonic, and multi-directional sound environment of experimental timbres recorded from the artist’s performances of analog synthesizers, electric guitar, and bass guitar. These audio recordings are arranged and performed live by a set of generative computer algorithms. This real-time computer- driven installation yields combinations of sonic events that never repeat. However, despite its stochastic nature, the overall composition yields a certain mood, experience, and spirit of time and place. When Dreams Are Reality is a three-dimensional sound installation augmented with subtle lighting set to quiet umber hues. Upon entering the installation, audiences have the opportunity to sit down on a bench to reflect on a sonic memory of when dense smoke engulfed San Francisco."
An important component of When Dreams Are Reality is the artist statement itself. This text is a character fiction — a San Franciscan’s self-implicating story of affective solitude, reflection, and response to experiencing the sight, smell, and breath of unhealthy air. To cope with the consequences of regional fires, the city dweller responds to the awesome aftereffects of local destruction in a manner consistent with the dominating worldview by which the city is fueled and fueling. The sonic memory itself belongs to the City of San Francisco as a living entity choked by smoke, as witnessed by the story’s character.
ARTIST TALK
About the Artist: Cristóbal Martínez, PhD is from Alcalde, New Mexico and is of the Genizaro, Pueblo, Manito and Chicano people in Northern New Mexico including Española, Abiquiu, Velarde, Pó t'síí pangeh, Embudo and Dixon. He is an artist, digital designer, publishing scholar, and Professor of Expanded Arts at Arizona State University.
Martínez co-founded the artist-hacker ensemble Radio Healer in 2003; joined the internationally acclaimed artist collective Postcommodity in 2009; and co-created, with post-Mexican artist-composer Guillermo Galindo, the experimental electronic music ensemble Red Culebra in 2018. Martínez has dedicated his life and career to interdisciplinary collaboration in contemporary art, and continues his work within these groups. In his collaborative and solo work, Martínez uses mixed media, digital media, and aesthetics to position generative metaphors intended to mediate complexity within diverse spatial, temporal, social, cultural, political, ecological, and economic contexts. He aspires to make poetic an idea-driven, propositional, and self-implicating art that re-imagines sites of contest, controversy, conflict, and consequence into those of generative public pedagogy, curiosity, and discourse.
Martínez has exhibited nationally and internationally, including: Contour Biennial 2011, Mechelen, BE; Adelaide International 2012, AUS; 18th Biennale of Sydney, AUS; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ; 2017 Whitney Biennial, NY; Art in General, NY; documenta14, Athens, GR and Kassel, DE; the 57th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, PA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Desert X, Coachella Valley, CA; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; San Francisco Art Institute, CA; LAXART, Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Remai Modern Museum, Saskatoon, SK; Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA; and Repellent Fence at the U.S./Mexico border, Douglas, AZ and Agua Prieta, SON