Project from artist Robert Seidel projects ‘laser drawings’ onto the San Andreas Fault to produce long exposure photographs:
This online exhibition showcases long exposure photographs of Robert Seidel’s “environmental laser drawings” captured in collaboration with Epicenter Projects curator Cristopher Cichocki. Spanning from the Coachella Valley to the edge of the Imperial Valley’s Salton Sea, this series of time-based laser drawings was developed alongside the mountain terrain of the San Andreas Fault. To begin, Seidel derived each laser pattern from creating digital line drawings: gestural markings suggestive of curve progressions seen within the Richter Scale or tectonic deformations. These minimalist sketches are manipulated into complex transformational sequences scribed by the laser onto the desert’s topology.
This fleeting yet precise gesture of the laser choreography becomes a visual spectacle at the intersection of seismology, performative drawing and laser interferometry extending upon the historic trajectory of Land Art in the American deserts. The inherently shifting San Andreas Fault line becomes fragmented and redefined through the laser’s ephemeral distortion of light and, virtually, space as well. As a true collaboration with the geology of the desert environment, “Magnitude” offers perceptual insights through the documentation of these performative actions. Here, from one minute to the next, the San Andreas Fault becomes a geomorphic intersection both reflective and refractive, tracing a portrait of a highly unpredictable landscape.
