Harvestworks Art and Technology Program presents Nick Brooke’s artwork Extant, in the exhibition Time Based Art: Space and Time in Tune. Extant is an immersive installation about celestial navigation amidst rising tides. An older mechanism of navigation–the sextant— is wired up to modern sensors and surround sound, to make an audience touch and learn this device.
The sextant is based on imprecise science–it relies on where you thought you were yesterday, on the high seas, to predict your current position. In this installation, the audience tries the sextant out, by lining up a star with the horizon in a split lens. As this happens, their location is sensed, but always in respect with where they were a while ago. The longer the participant is in the installation, the longer the generative system loses itself.
Extant reflects on “absence-of-field” effects— classic psychoacoustic experiments, such as Shepard tones and rhythm–acoustical barber poles–that are based on how fast they travel, not where they are, and they get lost over time. Amidst this sonic disorientation, the participant orients themself against programmed odds, while sounds swirl adrift around them.
The installation uses the sextant of Brooke’s grandfather, which he used to sail away to Tahiti. In creating the installation, Brooke learned to navigate, poring over his grandfather’s charts.
📢 “Extant” By Nick Brooke
🗓 DATE & TIME: May 17 – Aug 24, 2025. Open to the public: 11 am to 5 pm on Sat and Sun. Opening: Saturday May 17, 2025 from 3 – 5 pm
📍 LOCATION: Harvestworks Art and Technology Program Building 10a, Nolan Park, Governors Island
Viewing the “Extant”
Nick Brooke combines sound with theater, dance, and installation, creating unique devices and performances. In his theater works, vocalists and actors are trained to mimic sampled collages of sound effects, pop songs, and musical ephemera, blurring the line between recording and live performance. Brooke’s works have been featured across the U.S. and Europe, at Mass MoCA, HERE, Merkin Hall, Baryshnikov Arts Center, the MATA Series, and the Spoleto Festival, and have been performed by the Bang-on-a-Can All-Stars, Talujon, and Speculum Musicae, among others. He has received Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation awards, and multiple residencies including Djerassi, MacDowell, Bogliasco, and Bellagio. He has a Ph.D. from Princeton and teaches at Bennington College.
Extant, the installation. photos courtesy of the artist.
🌐 WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS
Website
🎬 ADDITIONAL LINKS
Bandcamp
Soundcloud
🎬 Press Quotes
“Brooke meticulously craft(s) a seamless, complex and intriguing sound art composition. It is operatic in scope, unfolding in layers that constantly reveal new meanings.” Culturebot
“[Brooke] intricately mashes up a dense collection of familiar and obscure musical quotations along with commonplace noises to make a fascinating score. It’s hard to not be impressed by Mr. Brooke’s meticulousness” NY Times
“An omnivorous experimentalist and craftsman” WNYC
