Resonant Grove | Austin Blanton
📷 Photos and videos by Shuoyang Zheng
A tree with a tangle of wires and copper is spouting noises from its trunk, inviting you to explore the mystery. As you move your hand closer, the sounds mutate, and activate invisible threads to other noisemakers in the forest. Is this cybernetic tree a contradiction, or can technology live in peace with the forest, and even help it thrive?
Austin Blanton is a human who has spent an unreasonable amount of time making noises. He likes to venture out into nature to make electronic music, to spontaneously compose from a briefcase collection of solar-powered miniature gadgets, to inhabit the voice of his mycological alter-ego Art Fungus. He is also one half of the glitch-folk duo Pocket Moon with his partner, who plays cello and intertwines her voice with his in organic intricate harmonies. He came of age in the underground DIY scene of Washington, DC, where he played bass and sang harmonies in the sonically curious but melodically inclined indie band Near Northeast. In true DIY fashion, he produced and mixed their four records in his bedroom at the top of a creaky hundred-year-old row house. He has grown to love the sound of creaks. After building some steam in the house venues, art spaces, and dive bars of their hometown DC, Near Northeast toured exotic locales like the Balkans and the Pacific Northwest. Around this time he also joined the experimental art pop collective The North Country, who just released their new record “The Future’s All We Need.” He now lives in Philadelphia and plays bass and drums for friends’ gigs around town.