Stepping out of the tradition of American land art, movement artist Karl Cronin will create three large-scale “earth tattoos” through a series of performance rituals responding to observable indicators of ecosystem health. Cronin will use his GPS-tracked body as ink, and the streets of South Brooklyn (NY), and the desert outside of Santa Fe (NM) and Chihuahua (MX) as skin. The spatial designs will be created through a performance ritual developed in conjunction with geographer Dr. William Forbes. Cronin and Forbes will explore observable indicators of ecosystem health and re-cast their observations in a performance ritual that will inscribe a design based on the indicator upon the earth.

Dr. Forbes conducted his dissertation at a site in the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua, Mexico where noted ecologist Aldo Leopold first conceptualized ecosystem health in the 1930s. This collaboration was born out of mutual desire between Forbes and Cronin to explore the use of experiential learning in the context of environmental health awareness. The methods for translating environmental process into movement will be based on Cronin’s 2008 iLAB environmental distillation protocol (work sample #2) and his multi-state performance ritual Body Telephone (2007) (work sample #1).

The GPS-inscribed designs will be overlaid on regional maps at www.earth-tattoo.com, where technologist Carl Tashian will create an algorithm that will cause the online images of the temporary earth tattoo to remain or fade in real time based on local sample data of the indicator’s state of health. The digital path created by Cronin’s performance will “decay” on the website if the general health/presence of the ecosystem health indicator diminishes. Cronin and Forbes will work directly with regional environmental data collection centers to acquire this data. While traditional land art decays based on the environment around it, the temporary earth tattoo’s online digital decay will graphically illustrate ecosystem health metrics that aren’t visible to the naked eye. The tattoo will fade if ecosystem health diminishes.

In addition to being able to observe the growing GPS design as it is created during the performance ritual, and its change over time, visitors to the website will be able to access archived audio recordings of the collaborator’s fieldowrk, photos of the performance, environmental data collected at each performance site, and information regarding the indicator’s relationship to the broader local ecology. The general public will be invited to witness the performance rituals, with Earth Tattoo premiering in Brooklyn (May 2010) and Chihuhua (Sept 2010).  Earth Tattoo will also be presented as a gallery installation in Brooklyn (NY), Santa Fe (NM), and Chihuhua (MX).

On-site research will be supported by the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative (Brooklyn) and sculpture professor Adan Saenz at the Universidad de Chihuahua (MX). GPS equipment will be loaned to the creative team by the Department of Sociology at Stephen F. Austin University (where collaborator Dr. Forbes is a professor), with tech-support provided by the Columbia Regional Geospatial Service Center. Cronin’s performance ritual will be developed in part with support from Movement Research (NYC) and the Santa Fe Art Institute (NM).