CLANDESTINE CALAVERAS

8:03 (audio with still images)

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2004

Clandestine Calaveras is a boxed set of nine postcard images of the Calaveras River overlaid with molecular structures and gas chromatography/mass spectrometer chromatograms of the chemical pesticides found in the river. A compact disk is part of this set for which I commissioned a musical score by Andrew Ardizzoia, played by cellist Scott Halligan, and sung by mezzo-soprano Laurelle Mathison. During my stay in Stockton, I would canoe each morning at dawn along the Calaveras with Kari Burr, an aquatic biologist monitoring water quality for Delta Keepers. The words featured on the CD are the names of the pesticides we identified and if you listen closely you will hear – chlorpyrifos, dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane (DDT), diazinon, malathion, methyl parathion, pendimethalin, prometon, and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE).

This set was produced for Aquatopia: A Confluence of Art, Science and the California Watershed when I was artist-in-residence at the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California in 2004.

Note: the score for this work can be found on pages 132 and 133 of Water Library.

Musicians performing Clandestine Calaveras.

CD and postcard set.