A visit to the Atelier of Kal Spelletich

“Listening to Stones” the piece is called.

Deep in his Mission studio, Spelletich says, “Here we have 3 stones vibrating. At different speeds, tempos, and with different masses.”I slowly turn on and off the stones, they shake, literally hum, vibrate. I tell him, of course, you live on a fault line, he slyly smiles.

These sonified stones make up a trio. Every surface of his workshop is covered with contraptions, gadgets, robots. Some in the works, many “finished”. Micro-controllers, sensors, and motors turn on and off a myriad of linkages and objects. Dark paintings by robot made while mourning the Ukraine war, a literal orchestra of sound machines, other contraptions to listen to the sun, moon and fog even.

Spelletich uses locally sourced Bay Area geology. “I found these stones on Thornton State Beach, Daly City. Foggy and windswept, on the fault line, they are, literally, tumbling into the sea.”“The story of nature’s elusive phenomena, one that stretches millennia, geologic processes and time” he says.

Sonification I think. Then, ahh, Rock Band!A three-piece, a trio. ala The Jam, Husker Du, The Ahmad Jamal Trio. He thinks he is clever. Well, maybe he is… I can play the stones for hours. They are mesmerizing. He lets me go and he wanders off, tinkering on something. I speed up and down the motors attached to the stones. I am jamming with the earth. It can get offensively loud, ambient, peacefully low, and pleasant. Like heartbeats.Intoxicating. Deep, primal. I speed one up and the other stone and then another start humming in cadence, in step if you will. I lose the track of time, 3 minutes? 6 minutes? I don’t know.

Kal muses on “The geological features of our planetary body. I Study and experiment with the Earth using technology”. “To reference Geological Time, we look at how the earth was and is formed, its structure, composition, the types of processes acting on it.

He shows me a hand-scribbled notebook passages,

Diagenesis
Earthquakes
erosion
glaciation
hydrothermal processes
isostasy
land subsidence
liquefaction
metamorphism
sediment transport
sedimentation
tectonic processes
volcanic activity
Earth tides
deformation
soil formation
magnetic storms
mass wasting.
Pages and pages of notes and drawings, plans and indecipherable scribbles.

Pages and pages of notes and drawings, plans and indecipherable scribbles.“I am working on and in conjunction with these.”Where I ask? “Here in the studio, in my garden, soon out in an actual landscape. “Soon”, he muses.

A studio visit by: Filippo Fortunato

27 June, 2023

~ by kaltek on August 25, 2023.