_{A Whisper in the Eye of the Storm by Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett (2024). Commissioned by Northern Alps Art Festival & Art Front Tokyo. Cover photo and image by Hirabayashi Takeshi. All other images by Caitlind Brown, unless noted.}

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A Whisper in the Eye of the Storm is an immersive installation created from 14,000 prescription lenses for Northern Alps Art Festival. Towering above the viewer like a shimmering forcefield or suspended rain storm, the piece draws from the powerful relationship between the surrounding region and water – as a source of sustenance, electricity, leisure, and life. The installation was designed in response to Omachi, a shrinking town in the Japanese Alps known for hydroelectric dams, beautiful mountainside lakes, and a rapidly shrinking population.

_{Above: photo by Hirabayashi Takeshi}

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A Whisper in the Eyes of the Storm invites visitors to see what they’d normally overlook. The work is installed in a cedar forest behind Nishina Shrine along the shore of Lake Kizaki. The work invites visitors to look at the landscape (and each other) with fresh eyes, seeing differently and peering deeply into the ancient and evolving landscape.

Visitors enter through a break in the curtain, encountering the lenses close-up, where they appear like falling rain or dew drops suspended between fine chains.

Each viewer follows a circular path, gently guided towards the centre of the artwork – ripples in water or the rings of a tree. As they move through layers of lenses, their bodies warp, pixelated by shifting optics. In the centre, they can sit on a circular bench, rest, and observe the surrounding landscape.

A Whisper in the Eye of the Storm is calm and restful – a visual poem, intended to highlight simple ways of seeing.  Through layers of immersion, each person is invited to experience an embodied meditation on the environment and themselves, shifting their perspective and seeing their surroundings with new eyes. 

A Whisper in the Eye of the Storm is on view at Northern Alps Art Festival in Omachi, Japan until November 4, 2024.

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Thank you to Northern Alps Art Festival for commissioning this work, Fram Kitagawa for inviting us, Sosei Sato and Takafumi Shimooka for coordinating our work, Daigo Honma and Aoki Kunito for installation support, and over 30 volunteers for helping build the installation!

The lenses were sourced secondhand (dead-stock) through the Canadian Lions Eyeglass Recycling Centre in Calgary/Mohkinstsis. Thanks to CLERC for providing this material.