Listen to a 15 minute "radio edit" of the installation:

Audible as one ascends into the Wave Farm pine forest is Yvette Janine Jackson's installation titled Underground (Codes). The installation is composed of two radio operas, Destination Freedom (2017), and Underground (Codes) (2022). The latter was created specifically for this installation at Wave Farm and is a response, or companion, to Destination Freedom. Both works are amplified by steel projection cowls donated to Wave Farm by artist Charles Lindsay from his Code Humpback installations.

Underground (Codes) (2022)
Writes Jackson:

The Earth-planet is the archivist of our past and future (selves)
While we fight for truth(s) with soil underfoot
She transmits atemporal memories to the heavens

Destination Freedom (2017/2022) is part of a series of radio operas themed around the Middle Passage stage of the transatlantic slave trade. The journey begins in the hull of a cargo ship transporting Africans to the Americas; time collapses and expands as the vessel morphs into a spacecraft on an elusive search for freedom. Jackson's radio operas are intentionally abstract, allowing space for listeners to draw upon their own experiences and preexisting knowledge in order to collaborate a narrative as the story unfolds.

This project is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special thanks to Jen Kutler for installation engineering support.

The Code Humpback steel projection cowls were donated to Wave Farm by Charles Lindsay with the intention of sharing art-devices in anonymous collaborations. Lindsay was the SETI Institute's first artist-in-residence and subsequently the director of that Silicon Valley based program. These cowls, modeled on air in-take vents on 20th century steamers, originally comprised part of the first output from SETI AIR. Made in collaboration with Dr. Laurance Doyle, Code Humpback first showed at the Solinas Art Museum in 2014 for A Centennial Celebration of Marconi & RCA Wireless Radio in West Marin and at MassMoCA in 2015 and 2016. They were fabricated by Wayne Campbell.

Pictured: Underground (Codes) installed at Wave Farm. Photographed by Patrick McCormack.