Habitation

Abstract

This film and accompanying thesis paper explore the landscapes and ecosystems of the Eastern Shore Barrier Islands of Maryland and Virginia amidst a rocket launch at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. Through the approach of sensory ethnography and poetic filmmaking, this film delves into the interconnectedness of humans and non-humans through a portrait of the landscape that a rocket launch port occupies. Experimenting with archival audio recordings of the Apollo 11 mission, contact microphone recordings, hydrophone recordings, cyanotype animation, Super 8, and digital media, this project challenges conventional science and natural history filmmaking aesthetics by pushing the boundaries of the form. As the audience is immersed in the landscapes of the film, they linger with machines, snails, seagulls, horseshoe crabs, fish, and wild ponies, offering moments of reflection to draw similarities between the seemingly different objects and organisms. This film connects the content of the film with its form by integrating the extractive processes of cyanotype, analog film, and digital media through the interplay of mediums and what is captured in frame. Organic materials of found salt, seaweed, shells, and sand are exposed in sunlight on cyanotype paper and the individual frames are edited together to create an animation. The ghostly white shapes of the materials dance around the frame in this camera-less technique, evoking an otherworldly swarm of flickering material against an ocean of Prussian blue. The imperfect graininess of the Super 8 footage offers a haptic experience to viewing these organic materials, again enmeshing the materiality of film's fossil fuel origins. In addition to this film, the thesis paper presents a theoretical analysis of the process and aesthetic choices that this film drew inspiration from. It explores the convergence of sensory ethnography and poetic filmmaking to ultimately seek new ways of perceiving how humans and non-humans interact with Earth in the context of the planetary crisis. By juxtaposing asynchronous sound and image, 'Habitation' invites reflection on time, extraction, and species to contemplate the value of the life and matter of the planet we inhabit.