In this work, three vintage Kennecott Copper Corporation billboard ads show narratives of economic prosperity and job creation that circulated widely during the dawn of industrialization. The billboards sit on top of slag waste piles and have embedded animations that illustrate a starkly different reality. Elements of the poster slowly begin to move in the animation to illustrate the labor strikes, abandoned houses, and environmental degradation in mining towns today.
The visual differences exemplify the disconnect between what was promised to these communities and the material living conditions the towns were actually left with.

Years of Life lost (we are within the waste)

Ripple Effect is an interactive art exhibition that visualizes local water quality data through sound, light, and water. Through software technology, water contamination data is translated into sound waves. 

The installation consists of speakers that play the ‘data soundtracks’, which vibrate the water held in attached trays. The sonic vibrations create unique patterns to emerge in the water, known as water cymatics. Participants hear and see the water vibrate based on the chemical concentrations found in their water samples. The more active the water, the higher the concentration. Ripple Effect travels to communities that face environmental pollution and has communicated water, groundwater, and rainwater data.

Ripple Effect serves as a reminder that our actions have a profound and direct impact on the most precious source of life on Earth. Tying to the ripple effect metaphor (ripples expanding across water in response to an initial disturbance), the participants are confronted to reflect on how their and/or society’s actions or inactions reverberate throughout the physical and social world.

Ripple Effect

A display case containing a photo of Rose and Landon Eitemiller in their backyard with the Humboldt Smelter in the background, a letter from the US EPA to Rose, Rose’s voice, slag and glass bone (held by Landon), a photo of the railroad tracks that is now Rose’s property (held by Rose), slag rock, and other personal artifacts.

Rose and Landon Eitemiller (mother and 14-year-old son pictured) are current residents in the mining town of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona where they were served water with arsenic and nitrate levels exceeding regulatory standards for over a decade and lived in a yard polluted with arsenic and lead. Landon was tested and found to have arsenic (above the 95th percentile) and lead in his urine and nails.

Years of Life lost (traces of arsenic in Landon)

Years of Life Lost visualizes the toxic aftermath of corporate mining in rural, low-income, predominantly communities of color throughout the Sonoran Desert, just north of the U.S. Mexico border. In many rural communities, slag is left behind in massive mounds of waste. In this work, the slag rock was collected and kiln-casted with glass to form human bones, representing the community's years of life lost from the toxic trespass of chemicals into their bodies, without their knowledge or consent.

The slag causes the glass to crack in the kiln, symbolizing one of the many potential health effects of chronic chemical exposure: weak and brittle bones (most commonly associated with lead). The slag interjected into the bones epitomizes how the body carries the burden of corporate pollution that shapes people’s health, exposures, and opportunities.

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Dorsey Kaufmann

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