Buffalo Soldier
A speculative narrative exploring the co-commodification of Black bodies and nature through tactility and material.
Buffalo Soldier inhabits the room before you arrive. Using piezo contact microphones and electret capsules distributed across space, the sculpture translates architectural presence into layered, low-latency spatial sound, a field that responds to proximity, weight, and the invisible acoustics of Black historical inheritance. The work takes its name and its burden seriously: to move through the installation is to move through contested terrain, where the militarized body and the sonic body meet and negotiate.
Conceptual Framework
An investigation of the co-commodification of Black bodies and nature by the government and military industrial complex, from the inception of the “Buffalo Soldier” to the present. The work draws on a speculative narrative of a buffalo soldier encountering an American Buffalo (Bison) and sharing a memory of harvest, slaughter, and rebirth.
Personal Connection
A connection with the researcher’s lived experience and his father’s fascination with the history and depictions of Buffalo Soldiers and Black Cowboys.
Platform
Bela (sub-millisecond audio) with ESP32 wireless satellite sensors.