JAMIE WALTERS KESSLER

Soundscapes in Motherhood V.2 - Live Symphony Composition, Jamie Walters Kessler, Sound work, 8min 55sec, 2014

Soundscapes in Motherhood is a contemporary sound work and musical composition. The score for the musical composition Soundscapes in Motherhood was written and based on an EKG graph that charted the contractions and fetal and maternal heartbeats of the artist during childbirth. The live feedback from medical technologies during the time of active labor and childbirth was recorded and then translated into a musical composition. Soundscapes in Motherhood serves as a conceptual portrait of the artist’s son, and represents the capacity of human connection represented through a technological interface.

Soundscapes in Motherhood has been presented as a live symphony performance for Mellon Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, presented as a sound-based work recording in gallery-based sites, and published in Digital America Art Journal and Feminist Spaces.

Jamie Walters Kessler is a contemporary artist with an interdisciplinary practice grounded in the traditions of conceptualism and incorporates disciplines of social practice, intervention, art actions, sound installation, video, painting, and context-based art. Through these methods of making, her work explores and challenges histories of human connectivity and its relationship to themes of technology, labor, landscape, social justice in America, and socio-cultural constructed forms.

She has exhibited nationally and internationally through exhibitions such as Digital America, The VII International Exhibition of Mail Art, Rome, The Miller Institute for Contemporary Art, Mid-America College Art Association, Corner Projects, Chicago, GAZE Film Festival, San Francisco, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. She is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art. Originally from Richmond, Virginia, she now lives and works in the Cleveland, OH area.