Between the Blur

This videoart piece utilizes coordinates of 3405 orphaned oil and gas wells within Alberta, Canada. Through a fast, generative process the data is illustrated geographically and translated to other locations in an attempt to view what is generally not viewable because of scale, geographic dislocation, and socio-economic constructs. Transposed locations include the city of Calgary, the Athabasca tarsands, a wellhead, and to the actual locations of orphan wellsites. Patterns of movement align in these locations according to the original layout of orphaned wells that traverse approximately 70% of the land area in Alberta. A meditative cascading rhythm occurs through scale and frequency, derived from the colonial system of the Dominion Land Survey that began mapping what is now Western Canada in 1871. The video is a poetic geographic journey questioning the system of the oil and gas industry, pondering this relation of land and cityscape to which it is irrevocably tied.