I wanted the mixes for internet to sound more like an engineered album or soundtrack, than the live opera, which was expectedly more formal. But the musical vocabulary has definitely expanded as well, due in great part to our sound designer, Jeff Cook, who has been with us since the beginning. I draw on a very specific part of my voice to channel Cynthia’s world, that I love to keep coming back to. Fancier too, as Shana’s aesthetic develops. She keeps getting closer and closer to nirvana with each new chapter. I’ve gotten to see Cynthia grow as a character. Now Shana and I have been working together for over a decade. I wanted to get into Cynthia’s head, and hear what the voices inside sounded like. Nick Hallett-The music I wrote was a sort of fan fiction to Shana’s earliest videos. In Whispering Pines 10, Cynthia becomes an expression of that failure.

But I have yet to find a way of doing it.

It was the kind of work I imagined I would do as an artist, blending my surrealist/absurdist approach with that type of direct activism. I saw it as both activism and as a durational performance, in the tradition of Tehching Hsieh’s year-long pieces. She effectively saved a 1500-year-old California Redwood and surrounding trees from being logged.

But she is also me when I have a creative or mystical revelation.įor this tenth episode, I was inspired by Julia Butterfly Hill’s 738 days tree-sit, which took place between 19, the same time as I was studying performance art. I appear in them as my alter ego, named Cynthia, who is essentially me when I am alone, feeling anxious, alienated, or filled with existential dread about how I can prevent aging and illness. Shana Moulton- Whispering Pines is the video art series I began in 2002, and is named after the mobile home park where I grew up, near Yosemite, California. Alex-Can you describe the project in your own words?

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