“Pondering” (2025-) is an ongoing, 4-channel video documentation of a field research site in the Deschutes National Forest. To create “Pondering,” I visit the site every 2 to 4 weeks and take numerous slow-motion drone shots, filming from the ground to the canopy. I stitch together 4 of these shots from (approximately) each month to create a ongoing, vertically moving portrait of seasonal changes. Nestled among the ponderosa pines that I’m filming is a research tower, Ameriflux US-Me4, that is equipped with remote sensing tools utilized by scientists at Oregon State University. Scientists routinely climb this tower to install and adjust devices and to gather data.

My introduction to this site was in June, 2024, as I was beginning work in collaboration with Dr. Christopher Still at Oregon State University through the L. L. Stewart Fellowship administered by the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts in Corvallis, OR. This project is also supported by FLUXNET supported by the National Science Foundation’s Accelerating Research through International Network-to-Network Collaborations (AccelNet) program, Award 2113978.

Inspired by scientists’ (and my own) frequent ascents up the 180-foot research tower, and their long-term observational experiments focused on this patch of forest, I developed this project as a way of chronicling changes over long stretches of time while moving ever-upward through the forest. Occasionally in my footage, my drone rises above the top of the canopy and films scientists climbing the Ameriflux tower.

This project is designed to be a fully immersive, full-round installation and is currently in progress. I had initially envisioned this project as lasting one year, but now I believe it may continue indefinitely.