Shining Like the Sun
Shining Like the Sun is a long-term research project inspired by Trappist monk, Thomas
Merton, who, on a Louisville street corner, was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization
that he was not separate from the beings that surrounded him. He “woke from a dream of
separateness and self-isolation,” saying, “There is no way of telling people that they are all
walking around shining like the sun.”
Using a variety of methods and media, the project investigates historical, psychological,
ecological and social phenomena, and seeks to render the linkages between these ideas and
the mingling of site and self.
Drawing on frameworks provided by systems theory, space/place theory, biogeography,
ecology, poetry and social science, I walk on and off the city’s grid and documenting,
contextualizing, giving voice to: historyscapes, inscapes (memories, fears, aspirations),
landscapes, creaturescapes, cityscapes, socialscapes. The media used are: photography,
sound recordings, field notes, and poems and essays.
To date the project has had five components. I anticipate more.
1. INTER : VIEW: A Conversation about Nature and the City
INTER : VIEW was funded by MICA in 2007. The project is an interdisciplinary exploration
into the connections between ecological sciences, urban public health and urban ecosystems,
and the imaginings, fantasies, stories and expressions of Baltimore city residents regarding
nature, their place in nature, their views of the city and its relationship to their health. I
videotaped and audio recorded interviews/oral histories with 20 Baltimore residents
(representing diverse ages, socio-economic groups and ethnicities). These interviews/oral
histories, accompanied by still photography, were compiled into a 24-minute video—in
May, 2009. A long-term goal for this project is to conduct similar interviews in cultures with
strong, existing nature traditions. For example, Japan (Shinto), Ireland (Celtic), Saudi Arabia/
Jordan (Bedouin).
2. It Can be Solved by Walking, a collection of poems, writings and photographs in search of
the place of self and collective (human and nonhuman) in an urban ecosystem; a reflection
on and response to Ted Nordhaus and Edward Shellenberger’s statement that “Humans have
become the meaning of the earth.” Published by CityLit Press in 2012.
3. Real and Imagined Paths of Water… is a field research project conducted in, along and across
an urban waterway (Jones Falls, Baltimore MD). It is an experiment in psychoecology…an
attempt to locate, verify, render, communicate my theory that intangible elements such as
history, memory, psycho/emotional states are valid ecosystem components and — in order
to understand urban places and the souls that live there — they should be studied along with
flora, fauna (and their artifacts), and the flow and cycling of inorganic materials.
4. Street Corner: a series of photos of the same Baltimore street corner (Preston Street &
Greenmount Avenue), featuring the Chicken Nook, a fast food establishment.
Emergence: a musical composition for eight voices (the same number of atoms
in both hemoglobin and chlorophyll molecules) using recordings of city/nature sounds as a
way of rendering the interrelationships in an urban ecosystem.
Shining Like the Sun is a long-term research project inspired by Trappist monk, Thomas
Merton, who, on a Louisville street corner, was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization
that he was not separate from the beings that surrounded him. He “woke from a dream of
separateness and self-isolation,” saying, “There is no way of telling people that they are all
walking around shining like the sun.”
Using a variety of methods and media, the project investigates historical, psychological,
ecological and social phenomena, and seeks to render the linkages between these ideas and
the mingling of site and self.
Drawing on frameworks provided by systems theory, space/place theory, biogeography,
ecology, poetry and social science, I walk on and off the city’s grid and documenting,
contextualizing, giving voice to: historyscapes, inscapes (memories, fears, aspirations),
landscapes, creaturescapes, cityscapes, socialscapes. The media used are: photography,
sound recordings, field notes, and poems and essays.
To date the project has had five components. I anticipate more.
1. INTER : VIEW: A Conversation about Nature and the City
INTER : VIEW was funded by MICA in 2007. The project is an interdisciplinary exploration
into the connections between ecological sciences, urban public health and urban ecosystems,
and the imaginings, fantasies, stories and expressions of Baltimore city residents regarding
nature, their place in nature, their views of the city and its relationship to their health. I
videotaped and audio recorded interviews/oral histories with 20 Baltimore residents
(representing diverse ages, socio-economic groups and ethnicities). These interviews/oral
histories, accompanied by still photography, were compiled into a 24-minute video—in
May, 2009. A long-term goal for this project is to conduct similar interviews in cultures with
strong, existing nature traditions. For example, Japan (Shinto), Ireland (Celtic), Saudi Arabia/
Jordan (Bedouin).
2. It Can be Solved by Walking, a collection of poems, writings and photographs in search of
the place of self and collective (human and nonhuman) in an urban ecosystem; a reflection
on and response to Ted Nordhaus and Edward Shellenberger’s statement that “Humans have
become the meaning of the earth.” Published by CityLit Press in 2012.
3. Real and Imagined Paths of Water… is a field research project conducted in, along and across
an urban waterway (Jones Falls, Baltimore MD). It is an experiment in psychoecology…an
attempt to locate, verify, render, communicate my theory that intangible elements such as
history, memory, psycho/emotional states are valid ecosystem components and — in order
to understand urban places and the souls that live there — they should be studied along with
flora, fauna (and their artifacts), and the flow and cycling of inorganic materials.
4. Street Corner: a series of photos of the same Baltimore street corner (Preston Street &
Greenmount Avenue), featuring the Chicken Nook, a fast food establishment.
Emergence: a musical composition for eight voices (the same number of atoms
in both hemoglobin and chlorophyll molecules) using recordings of city/nature sounds as a
way of rendering the interrelationships in an urban ecosystem.
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