“Something out there is waiting for us.”

Something Out There is Waiting for Us is a site-specific viewer-activated installation. This work immerses the participant in a dynamic environment, wherein two competing narratives of American Romanticism and Colonialism in Latin America are presented in dialogue with each other.

In a dark and cavernous room the walls are adorned with mural sized black-and-white prints on paper. The images are vignettes of dense, old-growth forests and verdant gardens. The floor is open except for a potted fern at the center. Low, symphonic sounds emanate from this.

As visitors navigate the room, their movement triggers green lights that illuminate the jungle scenes. Periodically, a cluster of three red laser-points appear on the wall, tracking slowly through the scenery, sometimes towards, sometimes away from the viewers as they move through the otherwise darkened space.

This multi-media work combines imagery from 19^th century landscape painter Frederick Edwin Church, symphonic music (heavily modulated) by romantic composer Modest Mussorgsky, and the lethal red-laser targeting pattern from the 1987 action movie Predator. It invites participants to immerse themselves in the edifying grandeur of uncorrupted nature, while being occasionally stalked by the terrifying embodiment of the same.