Charles Lindsay is a multi-disciplinary artist interested in technology, eco-systems, semiotics, and esoteric forms of humor. He creates immersive environments, sound installations, sculptures built from salvaged aerospace and bio-tech equipment, videos and photographs. Lindsay balances his studio time with extended periods exploring remote environments.

For Lindsay, time is even more of an unknown unknown. When looking at his work, we experience a kind of space age nostalgia that isn’t nostalgic; an (un)certain future that isn’t futuristic and a gap where the present should be. Lindsay’s work layers time, confuses chronology and keeps us guessing at what we are looking at, how it’s communicating, and what kind of being made it happen.  

Denise Markonish, Curator, MassMoCA

2016 is a pivotal year. CARBON was just published by Minor Matters. Many new works are being shown in public for the first time. The FIELD STATION installation at MassMoCA contains the Rocket Brain,  Crab Cage, Code Humpback, Sloths Dividing, Brain Coral / Deep Time Video Extraction Device, EMO aluminum works, and the Light Table which includes Fukking with Nature (Jeffrey Pine Sap) plus a proto-type cloud computer, a golden horseshoe crab resuscitator, 24 karat golden beer cans, Israeli military laser optics, syringes, loose screws, flotsam including a golden coconut and Mr. Potato Head, a hacked Korean War era field radar unit, an invitational beer coaster, and miniature humans. Works from MINING the MOON are in the Sun Valley Center for the Arts' CRATERS OF THE MOON show, including the Portable Wormhole Generator, the Deep Time Audio Extractor, and a seventeen foot composite photograph. Lindsay is currently the Director of the SETI Institute's Artists in Residence Program. He will soon become the Director of Human Condition's Artist in Research Program - creating a bi-coastal presence to bring scientists, technologists and artists together. OSA EARS is in fund raising mode. Lots more on all of this very soon.

Why all the Gold? I'm interested in connections to deep time, in symbols and experiences that transcend narrow, often culturally specific views of Now. All the gold on Earth was created in stars that died before ours was born. Horseshoe crabs have been on Earth for 450 million years. Humpback whales appear to have language, our machines are learning. Let's speculate about the future, about life beyond the anthropocene, about how sentience and consciousness might appear elsewhere in the universe.

OSA EARS is a project designed to provide real time 3D sound and a cloud of species and climate change data from one of our planet’s most bio-diverse rain forests to anyone anywhere in the world with internet. A networked array of microphones, web cams and sensor banks will expand over time to cover OSA Conservation’s entire 5000 acre wildlife corridor, from ground level to canopy top. Located on Costa Rica’s Osa peninsula OSA EARS will create a broad based platform for researchers and artists interested in habitat protection, soundscape ecology, remote sensing and bird song. It will serve as a home base for cutting edge field work, offering an opportunity to develop and adapt surveillance and sensor technologies for inter-disciplinary wildlife monitoring and protection. Our technology partners are top level. We are in fund raising mode. 

Consider the margins of our sensory capabilities and conceptual frontiers. What is Art to a synesthete, or to an alien looking in on our culture? What communications are we unaware of in the pheromonal territories, in the sub-sonic realms, in total darkness.  What are we missing?

Band of Fishing Buddies, preparing to fly into the upper Skeena River drainage, British Columbia, Canada - a perfect situation in which to consider what 'esoteric forms of humor' actually means.... what is this highly subjective and culturally specific mechanism for dealing with adversity and challenging concepts? Does it all boil down to the knowledge of our own mortality? We have stone-age humor, art world humor, and more fringe varieties. I find myself exploring absurdity. Like music, humor transcends mere survival requirements. And like music, we see it in species other than humans. Ravens are great humorists, as are wolverines. Porpoises play. Bower Birds make art. The notion of human existence on this fragile world lost in space appears increasingly absurd, particularly in the USA. We humans are so intelligent, so promising, and such knuckleheads. For this artist, these questions approach the heart of the matter. 'Going Fishing' is a work description. Thesis pending. Thanks for looking.