Catherine Wagner

WAVE ECHO

For the public art component of the Ocean Avenue South, Santa Monica, I have made a multilayered, narrative, and interactive artwork involving community and site specificity. It consists of a perforated metal screen in the shape of a 36-foot ellipse located underneath the sky bridge. LED lights, which sit behind the ellipse, are activated by two separate layers of information: one coming from generative algorithms of waves influenced by data collected from research buoys in Santa Monica Bay, and the other created by visitors’ and residents’ movements within the village. When thermal sensors detect passersby, the patterns of their movement interrupt and build upon the waveforms. In this piece, light and movement create a visual rethinking of the poetry of waves.