Last Known Whereabouts Project

mobile application

Last Known Whereabouts began as an IOS mapping application concerning missing persons in the Los Angeles area.

The project features an interactive map that allows user’s to track their proximity to the areas in which missing persons were either last seen, or last known to have visited.

The goal of the project is to point to a hidden geography that sits right atop our own. The landscape of the missing is one superimposed over the ubiquitous spaces that we occupy day to day. The strip malls, bus stops, and suburban streets where we find comfort take on a far more sinister identity when their histories are brought to light.

sound sculpture

When the app was in beta I would drive to these abduction sites to test its integrity in real time. I began collecting objects that I found in these places and amassed a small collection of what could objectively be referred to as trash. I would also take field recordings when possible. Concurrent to this project I built a sculpture (picture below) that used a hand-made, record lathe head to pass these field recordings through an object (in this case, objects that I found at these abduction sites) to then be collected by contact mics.

performance

The show involves me activating the sculpture with a 40 minute ambient piece composed of field recordings taken during my visits to these abduction sites, and performed using cassette tapes. Also included is a 3 channel video piece featuring a 180 degree view of those same sites. The experience functions as a guided meditation of sorts on the intersection between two contrasting, yet co-existing geographies. The geography of the present (ourselves in the space) and the geography of the missing.

The nature of the work strikes a balance between installation, screening, performance, and theater.