Unearthing Sound

Heather Dappen

Interview by L. Valena
September 13, 2023

Can you start by describing the prompt that you responded to?

I received a six-minute-long song that was an intricate symphony of sound. It was evident the artist put a lot of time and attention into their process because the song had many different layers of vocals and instrumentation. It was impressive and it rallied me to try to do it justice.

What were your first thoughts and feelings about the piece?

The song begins quite eerie and mysterious. There's this deep ominous voice that resembles something out of a David Lynch film. I was intrigued by the intensity of the mood it created. The song opens with the lyric, “planting words deep in the ground, unearthing sound, clock ticks round, sleep is lost, but light is found." That phrase more than anything kept frequenting my visions.

What happened next?

As I spun on the lyric “planting words, unearthing sound,” I envisioned items penetrating the earth, and then the soil anthropomorphizing into a human profile to utter her response to the onslaught.

As porous beings, humans are not unlike soil. Our surroundings inevitably influence what we reflect back and what grows out of us. We are inundated with input left and right– positive, negative, neutral. We absorb all of this and it lays latent in us in some form or another.

We then turn it around into the next iteration with the individual actions we take. While every person is impacted by what’s “planted in their soil,” it remains impossible to guess what that provokes within each individual.

Cool! How did you decide to make what you made?

The lyrics instantly had me visualizing a stop motion music video. But video editing has never been my main pursuit, so I was thinking of ways I could cater this vision to my specific skills. I have always loved collage, and realized I could make a bunch of slightly varied collages to combine into one stop motion short.

I wanted to stretch myself in the collage arena, and use as many different media as possible, not just 2D. I found my 3D element by playing in the dirt… yes, the literal dirt. I dug around in the muck with childlike abandon. Eventually, I laid a bunch of earthen textures down in contours. This was done on top of the ground, but I knew I could digitally edit it to make it look like a vertical cutaway of geologic layers. After I designed this background element, I cut out all the letters I would need from magazines. I was trying to keep off the computer as long as possible, but once I had all these different raw materials, I digitally collaged them together.

It's such an exciting combination of things!

I had so much fun collecting dirt and filth, I was quoting Monty Python the whole time.

How does this relate to the rest of your work?

Completely different! I’ve never plunged into stop motion before. But I was realizing that my brain thinks in stop motion, so this was the perfect opportunity to live out my inner workings.

You said this is much more multimedia than what you usually do. How did it feel to work this way, and what are you usually working with?

When I collage I usually rely on magazine or paper clippings, it's very 2D. And then as a graphic designer, I usually can’t resist adding some finishing touches on the computer.

But with this project it was such a treat to get out of the chair, go down to the river, dig around, and start looking for textures that exist in nature. I was pulling up pond scum, finding neat little rocks and leaves… definitely dug up some scat... My favorite part of the whole process was getting to create this little dirt heap that would serve as my video’s background. I took 17 separate photos, entrusting my partner as my stable tripod (I wanted the wobble). Then I warped the aesthetic of these photos digitally to be closer to the mood I was envisioning.

I would love to hear some more about the words you've used in this piece. The idea of something going into the ground as nurture and coming out as nature. Can you say some more about what that means to you?

Since the song says, "planting words," I wanted to expand on this theme and have words in my piece as well. I envisioned a word or phrase that would enter as the “input” and then alter its letters slightly to demonstrate how the output has our individual adaptation. I considered many near-anagrams phrases, like "scarcity" could morph into "cities scare me.”

After contemplating different phrases, I landed on “nature/nurture.” People usually say "nature versus nurture," as if they're diametrically opposed. However, I like thinking about how nurture/nature have correlation and maybe even causation. What if nurture precedes nature? It’s very chicken or egg, I suppose. But I do know that if there is nurturance, then something can grow. I would hope proper nurturing can lead to flourishing.

That 'nature versus nurture' idea comes up in politics a lot too, doesn't it? Especially in conversations around gender and sexuality. It's so complicated.

Right? People try to codify a narrow definition of what is “natural” so they can condemn anything outside of that. Then, if they regard something as “unnatural,” they can point fingers at something or somebody that “led them astray.” That seems reductive and inaccurate.

Working through this art piece made me feel that the two concepts of nature/nurture are inextricably linked. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, it feels like we all just have to practice putting nurturance into this soil. Whether that’s the literal soil of the land, or the soil of ourselves. And if we're nurturing that, hopefully, we can allow ourselves to blossom from there.

Do you think you'll make more stop motion videos like this?

Yes, now that I've done it once, there’s no turning back. I’ve been looking around my surroundings for things that could become a whole other world when flipped sideways or upside down. Since I can use digital tools to layer the physical world with other elements, it really opens up my definition of collage.

That's so exciting! Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

Just go with whatever fluky idea pops in your head. Graphic design/art is my job, and while that's a beautiful opportunity, the flip side of it is I’m always trying to intuit the vision of the client. I rarely get to listen to that little pull inside me that wants to take me down some random tangent. But giving that voice an opportunity to have time out of the closet is immensely satisfying. Turn off the judgments and just allow the drift!

Call Number: Y113MU | Y115FI.daUne

Heather Dappen is a freelance graphic designer, artist, and muralist hailing from rural Washington State. She usually exercises her whimsy in the morning, and then settles into her analytical side by dinner. Every time Heather begins a new project, she feels baffled and grateful that her work allows her to solve puzzles in a playful and colorful manner.