Intimate Ecologies
2025
Six channel live audio and video 

Katy McCarthy: concept + video

Miles Jefferson Friday: concept + sound design

Intimate Ecologies is an immersive, mixed media installation that invites audiences into an intimate encounter with San Antonio’s natural and non-human watershed environments. By utilizing innovative video and audio recording techniques, Intimate Ecologies aims to create a close-proximity experience between humans and the often unnoticed activities of our natural ecological systems.

Intimate Ecologies consists of four video channels projected onto 12×7’ screens  and two additional video channels projected onto the concrete arches of Confluence Park. The videos merge ambient footage of various wetlands, insects, and river landscapes around San Antonio with footage of the artist’s pregnant body and infant daughter in nature. Video is recorded with a macro lens, an analog video camera, and a digital microscope. 

Viewers of Intimate Ecologies also wear wireless headphones and listen to algorithmically generated audio (built by retrieving and processing a large library of field recordings, percussion samples, and voice recordings in real-time). While exploring the park and watching videos, viewers can toggle between three different stereo audio channels, each of which contains a unique soundscape and explores the strange parallels between pregnancy, early parenthood, and wetland ecosystems.

Intimate Ecologies prioritizes biospheric cross-collaboration and environmental stewardship by reflecting on questions of multi-sensory proximity and intimacy. Avoiding invasive audio installation methods predicated on extraction and disruption, Intimate Ecologies proposes a “silent” outdoor event, connecting visitors with their micro ecological counterparts while also highlighting our personal and physical interconnections.