Locate / Navigate: exercises in mapping (Part 2)
by Kate Hackman (excerpt from essay)



The colored LED lights located behind the pristinely etched black mirror
surface of Jorge Garcia's Untitled (Parallel Lines) are fed by sound
collected simultaneously via handheld recorders positioned on either side
of State Line Road separating Kansas and Missouri - a boundary charged with
political, racial, and socio-economic implications.

These two different recordings have been overlaid - fused - and play concurrently
through an electronic device connected to the piece, thus informing the light and
color patterns visible across its surface. The eched form itself hinges on a vertical
center dividing line, with the curvilinear pattern articulated on one side of the
center mirroring that on the other side.

Mapping specific context onto symmetrcal abstraction, Garcia superimposes two bodies of
information similarly structured around a border or division. Wedding the two "opposing"
sound recordings to together illuminate one lyrical form, he further seems to posit a
reconciliation of difference across borders, and to point out the contingent nature of
that border to begin with.