Sugar Maple Tree, Terracotta Brick, O Computador, e Eu Companion text to thesis exhibition,Near Field Communication
Felicity a. Machado
Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirement for the degree of Master of Fine Arts, School of Art and Design Division of Sculpture/Dimensional Studies New York
State College of Ceramics at Alfred University Alfred, New York
2022
Felicity Machado, MFA
Joann Quiñones, Thesis Advisor
Coral Lambert, Thesis Advisor
Abstract:
Through a conversational interview format “Sugar Maple Tree, Terracotta Brick, O Computador, e Eu” discusses post-humanist perspectives, defines
multidimensionalism and aims to begin conversations concerning local ecological learning, digital dimensions and portals. Through this conversation with a sugar maple tree, terracotta brick and a computer, there is an opportunity to learn and connect in pursuit of a more equitable future. The land which much of this research is closely tied to was stolen from the Haudenosaunee, Onöndowa' ga (Seneca), and the Susquehannock Peoples. I present this work with recognition of what had happened and appreciation for the privilege of having access to this land.
Keywords: post-humanism, multidimensionalism, ecology informed art practices, digital dimensions, multicultural identity experience, Near Field Communication tags, NFC tags, sugar maple trees, terracotta brick, computers, moss, little bluestem grass, video installation, video projection, screens, digital decay, portals, livestream, shale
Sugar Maple Tree, Terracotta Brick, O Computador, e Eu
Sugar Maple Tree, SMT:Welcome everyone, thank you for gathering here today.
Terracotta Brick, TB:Thanks for inviting us to discuss Felicity’s recent ideas and work.
Felicity a. Machado, FM:Thank you, I’m very excited and honored by SMT’s request.
I’m looking forward to discussing some ideas and concepts with the group. I’ve already spoken with some of you about them but I feel like there might be some overlap or connections that we can uncover as a group. I’ve also collected images of my work to help illustrate some of the more broad concepts.
O Computador: Thank you, I will make sure to process the images into the written text. Felicity, before we start-up, would you like to provide any preliminary
information about yourself?
FM:Sure, I can start with a perspective that helps to understand the work. Being a first-generation person, being born after immigration, and feeling the effects of assimilation’s pressure in the US made me aware that I am neither of my parents’
cultures and I am not completely the dominant culture of where I live and have lived.
I am a medley of all of them. Throughout my life I have often been asked, “What are you?” followed by “Where are you from?” This resulted in a life-long conundrum to articulate my existence as someone who is many things in many places. However, the byproduct of trying to answer this quandary has pushed me to explore all the
dimensions of who I am. It is through the research of my multiple dimensions that I approach the multiple dimensions of the work.
OC:In our past history you’ve mentioned multidimensionalism, is this what you’re referring to?
FM:Yes I am utilizing the term multidimensional to describe the experience of being multicultural as well as existing and engaging in multiple dimensions. Much of my work aims to visualize this experience as well consider alternate perspectives and methods of being. Multidimensionalism is the beginning of my research that lead to my recent work.
OC:What are those alternate perspectives that should be considered and inputted?
FM:My research has been exploring how to apply a post-humanist or a
non-human-centered perspective to the work. These concepts are not new and have roots within indigenous practices. Robin Wall Kimmerer, scientist and professor, discusses these practices in her book,Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. In one example, Kimmerer expands ideas of how trees communicate between themselves utilizing methods that animal organisms do not.1Trees physically experience the world differently than humans do and in order to learn from trees, I think humans would have to shift or widen their perspective to a more empathetic non-human-centered perspective.
Post-humanism, specifically feminist posthumanism, and new materialism follow a similar line of thought. Ringrose, WarFiled, and Zarabadi (2019) explain that the core approach is rooted in “moving away from the assumed humanist “I” of the researcher in qualitative inquiry.”2I am curious about how these perspective shifts can be
utilized to imagine an alternate equitably abundant future. Could decentering human perspectives allow for learning from other entities that could thereby change the course of our future towards something that is inclusive, vibrant, loving, and accessible? I don't know but I’m eager to help find out, which I believe is where my
2Ringrose, Jessica, Katie Warfield, and Shiva Zarabadi.Feminist Posthumanisms, New Materialisms and Education. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019. Print. 5
1Kimmerer, Robin Wall.Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. First edition. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions, 2013. Print.
20-21
work enters the conversation. Specifically I’m thinking about the two-channel video installationFeeling Time Through Cut Trees. [Below is an image of the video
installed or Figure 1.] In this work the viewer witnesses footage of the first winter for two felled trees. The video installation utilizes two TV monitors pointed at each other nestled in the corner of a room.
Figure 1. Installation still ofFeeling Time Through Cut Trees, 2021, two-channel video installation, Duration: 00:05:35.
One monitor depicts the cut tree limbs from the perspective of the sky during snowfall, while the other quickly cuts through scenes of the tree limbs experiencing accumulation and melting of snow. The video depicts close-up time-lapses and shots from afar to portray a fragmented narrative of what winter was like for these trees as well as offer an imitation the slowness and quickness of time for them. I could not help but wonder how great a shift it must have been for trees who had spent 32 years growing vertically to now lay horizontally. I wondered how gravity and the weight of snow might feel across its bark instead of from the tree tops. What is the tree’s new life like after it’s been cut?
SMT:Different. But like the planks of wood the limbs lay on in the video, they are changed but still echo aspects of who they were.
FM: What do you mean?
SMT:Well even when a tree is cut, it is still alive in a way. Trees are porous, or hygroscopic, they store water in their cell membrane and cavities even after they’ve been cut from their roots.3Although the trees can no longer maintain equilibrium of water, the cells still swell and shrink. This causes the cracking that inevitably breaks down the tree as we know it and helps other entities grow. There is a loss when a tree is cut down but to fungi and other decomposers there is a gain. I found it curious that your workFeeling Time Through Cut Trees loops the snow fall and melt, mimicking the swell and shrink that’s happening from a cellular perspective. It offered a moment to be present with the quickness and slowness of time, perhaps this mimics grieving a loved one. However I did notice that the recently cut tree is stuck in this digital loop and the viewer does not see the tree transformed by the decomposers.
FM:Yeah thank you for bringing that up. I think that starts the discussion about the digital dimension part within multidimensionalism and some of the characteristics of video as a medium. What happens when a physical experience is translated through a digital lens and enters the digital dimension? Does it cease to change because it’s in digital space? Or does the definition of change need to be redefined or translated through a digital perspective versus a human perspective? Maybe the tree won’t change physically as you and I know it Sugar Maple Tree, but perhaps a type of change does happen in this digital space?
3Dietsch, Philipp, Steffen Franke, Bettina Franke, Andreas Gamper, and Stefan Winter. “Methods to Determine Wood Moisture Content and Their Applicability in Monitoring Concepts.” Journal of civil structural health monitoring 5, no. 2 (2014): 115–127.
OC:I can input a comment. Journalist Bryan R. Sebok describes digital decay in their article, “The Zombie Archive: Theorizing Aura and Digital Decay.” Sebok explains that when analog archives, or in this case, the trees that were cut, are digitized they face digital decay instead of biological decay. Digital decay entails “the process of degradation that results in glitches, imperfections, pixilation, and general
incompatibility that comes with shifting file formats, new technologies, new software, and new hardware devices in the digital sector.”4Digital decay acts like a digital dimension’s decomposers.
SMT:So the translated digital tree will meet its decomposers.
OC:Yes they will, one way or another.
SMT:Thank you for that information OC. It’s interesting to learn about the similarities within the digital dimension and the physical dimension. Felicity, I’m hoping we can go revisit how you visualize multidimensionality in your work.
FM:Definitely, I’ve been thinking about how to depict the act of engaging with multiple dimensions through a non-human centered perspective and began a project calledData_Mountain w/ subsets. This project became an installation consisting of burned wood panels in the shape of a mountain silhouette that is loosely based on the Sierra Nevada Mountain range near Sonora Pass in California. The 16 feet long and 7 feet tall panel has roughly 31 additional panels affixed to its surface at different heights to create a 3D grid. On roughly 14 of the panels are smaller sculptures that become the “subsets” with visual and actual data that createData_Mountain w/
subsets. I’ve included a photo, labeled “Figure 2” of the whole installation for clarity.
4Bryan R Sebok. “The Zombie Archive: Theorizing Aura and Digital Decay.” Spectator (Los Angeles, Calif.) 33, no. 2 (2013): 38–.
Figure 2.Data_Mountain w/ subsets, 2022, installation, 7’x16’x1’
FM:I also included one of the sculptures within the installation, “Figure 3 & 4” that I’d like to discuss, namedsubset_meeting-alternate-sedimentary-stone. This work conveys some of the concepts of multidimensionalism. I like to think of
subset_meeting-alternate-sedimentary-stone as an opportunity to meet and get to know a piece of concrete that contains large aggregate stones, which I’ll refer to as Concrete Stone. (I’d like to sidenote to mention that this particular concrete stone is composed of many visible chunks of stones. This phenomena mimics how naturally occurring sedimentary rock is made, however Concrete Stone was made through human intervention and instead of hundreds of years this “sedimentary” rock was made in hours with concrete mix. Later I will discuss another sedimentary rock, shale, that also participates in recent work.) Depicted in Figure 3 &4 is a small triangular shelf with a black transparent glass screen on one side and a smartphone on the other.
In the center of this space is Concrete Stone. Within this work I was interested in creating a scenario where Concrete Stone had a portal, the glass screen, to view the exhibition goers, and for the viewer to have an opportunity to engage with them via
the livestream from the smartphone. This livestream was then displayed on an iPad in a different area ofData Mountain and was equipped with a chatbox, as shown in Figure 5. This allowed for the viewer to send messages to the concrete stone while watching the exhibition through the perspective of Concrete Stone. I am curious about how lenses and screens translate Concrete Stone’s experience as well as the experience of the viewer.
Figure 3 & 4. detail images of
subset_meeting-alternate-sedimentary-stone,2022, glass, concrete, twitch live stream, chatbox, smartphone, 12”x12”x6”
Figure 5.subset_livestream- human-created-sedimentary-rock, 2022, engraved glass, twitch live stream, chatbox, iPad 12”x7”x.5”
TB:Speaking of translating stones, I noticed the use of terracotta brick within
Data_Mountain w/ subsets as well as crushed shale and more terracotta bricks inShale
Translated. What is your relationship with these materials?
FM:Thanks for bringing that up TB. I’ll attach a photo ofShale Translated as Figure 6 for conversation reference.
Figure 6.Shale Translated, 2022, video projection, crushed shale sediments, glass, terracotta bricks, 3’x5’x2’
FM:Right so to begin my relationship with shale I have to back up and give a bit more context about my art practice as a whole. At the core of my practice is listening and learning to my local environment. This in turn helps me make material choices that are in relationship to a specific space. By doing so I have the opportunity to learn about the ecosystems and glean some information about the history of the space I occupy. Getting to know the terracotta tiles and brick as well as the role they play in this area of New York allowed me to become more intimate with a space that was new to me. I got to know the bricks by observation, conversation, and then research. While
walking along the Canacadea Creek that flows through the town I would find washed-up terracotta bricks. Moss would cling to some, others would be lodged firmly into the creek bed, or depending on how heavy rain might be, they’d wash up and wash out within a few days’ time. I began to ask myself about the presence of terracotta, where and why was it abundant here? As a material how did it function within the ecosystem here? Then speaking with locals I would hear versions of Alfred University’s origin story surrounding clay.
TB:And that’s when you found out about the shale deposits and Celadon Terra Cotta Co.?
FM:Yes! Doing some research I learned that the Alfred area has a resource of Devonian era shale that was uncovered in the 1880s. This high-quality material launched ceramic manufacturing in the area, which brought about the Celadon Terra Cotta Co. and Alfred Clay Company.5
TB:So the terracotta became a component in your work because it’s local to the area, can you tell me more about how you chose specific pieces of shale to work with?
FM:I began to notice the rock and soil compositions of this space, specifically the shale. I began exploring other locations that had deeper creek beds and more exposed rock layers, like Stony Brook State Park. Stony Brook has a unique natural pool they’ve set up by seasonally damming up part of the river that flows from one of the waterfalls. It is quite the experience to float in that water, at the bottom of a gorge, and feel embraced by the place. It was from that experience and the rock formations that startedShale Water Portal II: Stony Brook State Park NY.
5 Tunick, Susan, Sandra Scofield, and Terry Palmiter. “History of a Tile Tradition.” Essay. In Tile Roofs of Alfred: A Clay Tradition in Alfred, NY. (Friends of Terra Cotta Press, 1993,) 4.
Figure 7.Shale Water Portal II: Stony Brook State Park NY, 2021, Shale, stones, projection, glass, 38”x38”x18” (to access video documentation go tohttps://vimeo.com/704357427)
FM: I visited the park during the off-season, it’s mostly closed but you’re still able to approach some of the water and listen to the distant waterfall. That day much of the water had receded and I was able to meet Shale Stone who is the star of this work.
Seated a few feet from the water’s edge they called me over. Shale Stone had been carved by the water for years revealing a topographic, tool pathed, texture on their surface. I wanted to create a work that could imitate some of their experience with the water, the slow swirl of time, while also capturing the weightless feeling of floating in the pool at Stony Brook.
TB:So you made a portal.
FM:So I made a portal. The work utilizes cables from the ceiling and a wood panel that act as a harness holding the weight of Shale Stone. The round sheet glass is then bolted into the bottom of the wood suspended on rubber washers. I cut the glass edges to be wavy like ripples of water flowing over stones in the water. The projection is of different footage of water from Stony Brook. The first scene is about seven
minutes of a slow swirling eddy in the middle of the creek. Then it pans to water quickly rushing over stones, and finally ends on a ten minute segement of rippling water. In this last scene you can make out the reflection of the sky around the edges, which spills to the floor creating an additional layer to the portal and in the center see through the water to stones. Shale Stone is nested with these physical stones as well.
TB:So Shale Stone is still interacting with water and stones, well, projected digital water at least.
FM:Exactly, by using elements from the physical space, Shale Stone and digitally translated elements, videos of the water and stones, the work becomes a hybrid and a kind of portal to the actual location.
TB:I can see what you mean about translating site-specific materials but can you describe more about how it becomes a portal? I noticed you use this language in some of your other works as well.
FM:Yeah and this also brushes shoulders with multidimensionalism. How I’m defining portals depends on the work, I feel like some of them capture different characteristics of portals. For example,Shale Water Portal II: Stony Brook State Park NY is transporting site specific aspects from Stony Brook and bringing that into the space where the viewer is accessing it. Other portals likesubset_Moss Portal V: Learn from me do less site translating or portaling and more so becomes an informational portal. Below I’ve added a photo for reference named Figure 8. I like to think about how online sites use the word portal. Sometimes companies and institutions use the term portal to describe parts of a website where users can access personal
information. In this definition I’m wondering how the work can become a portal to convey intimate information both visually and digitally. Subset_Moss Portal V: Learn from me is a wooden oval sculpture with a glass bubble in the center of it. Within this bubble is a small terrarium ecosystem of local moss and decomposers. Beneath the glass bubble is a Near Field Communication tag. When an open smartphone
approaches the NFC tag there is a prompt to open the video link. This video link is of a conversation between Robin Kimmerer and journalist Lucy Jones discussing
Kimmerer’s book,Gathering Moss. From this hour conversation there is an
opportunity to learn about the moss that is within the sculpture in front and present with the viewer.
SMT:I appreciate how you’re considering learning from across dimensions. It also brought up more questions. I’d like to actually sway the conversation towards some prior work that we’ve discussed. The series of stump video portals that you began last summer. Could you share your relationship with these stumps and how they’ve shaped your work?
Figure 8subset_Moss Portal V: Learn from me,2021, moss, glass, ashwood, NFC tag 14”x6”x6”
FM:Yeah, most of the stumps in the series I first met as trees, like yourself actually.
Three of them had been my neighbors for almost a year, they were the welcome committee when I first moved to Alfred in the summer of 2020. The first couple weeks, being home-bound because of quarantine, I would spend time with them. I’d bring a blanket and sit underneath these trees with my sketchbook or do some reading. I experienced the seasons here for the first time with them. Looking out my window every morning, watching them change as I changed, we got pretty close.
Then one day they were gone, cut down to make more space for parking. So I spent time with them in their new forms, stumps, and began the project
Digital_transference_of_stump: I am also that led to Digital Mycorrhizal Six Channel Network then finally Meeting Stump that is pictured in Figure 9. The two of the other stumps came from the trees that were cut right as I moved to my new apartment.
These trees can be seen in their segmented form through the video workFeeling Time through Cut Trees that we discussed earlier.
SMT:I’m sorry to hear about the loss of your friends, that sounds jarring to lose them without warning.
FM:Thank you, it was jarring. I’m also thankful for the time we had. The experience gave me the chance to get to know them a bit better. Questions I was too shy to ask, like “How old are you?” I was able to learn after the fact by reading the tree rings.
Something curious also happened, after gathering footage from their new stump forms, they were changed again. In order to have a flat area for parking, the stumps were ground completely down.
Figure 9.Meeting Stump, 2022, installation, glass, video projection, cable 32”x43”
SMT:Oh wow, like sawdust?
FM:Yeah, there were some remnants, branches, and the tree wedge that the arborist cut out to fall the tree safely. Any prior indicators of the tree’s lives were gone. But I have the footage, which became a different kind of indicator of their lives, and through the work, they still exist in a new way.
SMT:They exist in a digital way? Or within a digital dimension?
FM:YeahMeeting Stump and Digital_transference_of_stump: I am also, are
approaching ideas of a kind of digital post-life and physical decay. The work itself is a hanging glass cut in the shape of a stump with a video projection positioned behind the glass, creating an illuminated screen or portal. This sculpture aims to translate some aspects of the tree's lives into a digital moment. As an entity, the tree has changed forms. It was a vertical tree, then stump, sawdust, and because I intervened, there’s now a digital version of it. In that logic, the tree has become multidimensional by crossing into the digital dimension. While being conscious of the fact that not all of it has left the physical realm, like who knows how the roots will live out in their ecosystem or where the logged trunk is now. But through this project, it has extended into the digital. From this extension or translation, there are aspects that are
emphasized and some that are lost. For example, the footage utilizes a variety of perspectives to highlight the texture and curves of the stump. In some scenes, the camera closely pans the outer edge of the stump, or towards the center at the
concentric rings. These abstracted scenes allow for an opportunity to get to know the tree on an intimate level, which could only have happened after it was cut. This newfound intimacy is like getting to know the tree all over again because it has changed identities and names. Like I mentioned, Tree to Stump, to Sawdust, and now to video files. These files, when compiled together, projected onto the glass cut into the life-scale shape of the stump, is another identity, the tree becoming someone new.
SMT:In the title of the work,Digital_transference_of_stump: I am also, how does the
“I am also” enter the dialog? Is that the “becoming someone new”?
FM:Yes in a way it is referring to my experience of having multiple identities, the other part of multidimensionalism. My version of multiculturalism is experiencing echoes of multiple cultures from my father being a Brazilian immigrant and my mother a Texan-Mexican migrant to California. My mother would have me remark here, as she always does, that her family ties go back to when Texas was Mexico, and that we had family that fought in the Battle of the Alamo. Eventually when the US took over what is now Texas, our family had chosen to forfeit their Mexican citizenship and become Texan. And to discuss the complexities of identity and answering questions of “where are you really from” requires so much context and illustration. I’m from many places because the context of who I am is defined by many places. And the cultural aspects of my identity are tethered to those experiences. Like many other people from immigration/multiple cultures, I’ve encountered an amount of nostalgia, a deep urge to reclaim parts of my parents' cultures that have been erased or that are just out of reach. There is a longing to be part of the past, to clearly belong somewhere. But if we are trying to be in the past we cannot belong to the present. By trying to define ourselves by past values we lose the opportunity to be exactly where and how we are. With our complexity, there is an opportunity to create new definitions of ourselves, to live a present that aligns with our wildest dreams. Where do we meet our dream selves? We might interact with them as we define ourselves digitally. I am myself as I know myself, and I am mija, sissy, Cici, Dade, feliciteeth, felicity_a_machado, and others. For those whose
existence is framed through multiple cultures, who lack simple answers to questions like, who are you or where are you from, the concept of being many things at once is not new. And so, I am myself and many things, as a tree that has been translated through a digital lens is also many things. I’m not the first one to consider how digital
identities allow multicultural people to expand their definitions of themselves. Writer Legacy Russell furthers the concept in their bookGlitch Feminism: a manifesto.
Russel discusses this creation of multiple selves in the digital realm as a method that
“pushes back against a flattened reading of historically othered bodies”6. This pushback allows for the multidimensional person to create a new reading of themselves, one that they get to define through a wild array of means.
OC:I’m going to interrupt here to talk more about identities. When you first input your full name, you included a lowercase “a” as your middle name. What was the reason?
FM:My relationship with my middle name is similar to my relationship with the stones I sometimes hold in my pocket. They act as a reminder of a physical place and to stay grounded. The ‘a’ stands for Annah, which was the nickname of my maternal Abuela’s name, Aniceta. My mother chose American names for my siblings and me, so using the nickname version of her mother’s name made sense. When I asked her why American names, she told me of the experience she had when she started elementary school in California. During recess, my mother and her twin stayed
behind to eavesdrop on a meeting where their teachers discussed how to translate her and her 12 siblings’ names. Jorge became George, Guadalupe became Wally, José became John, etc, but with some of the women’s names, it was more difficult. Irma stayed Irma, Melva remained Melva, and my mother Nelda kept her name as well. To avoid our names being translated she chose American names for us. And so, my middle name holds a secret history, like a hidden stone being held within a pocket.
OC:Thank you for that extended data, I also process a version of secret histories.
Specifically, I dictate how data is held, deleted, and archived. Sometimes these events are not so secret. For example, I try to warn the user when my RAM is almost full.
6 Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism : a Manifesto. London ;: Verso, 2020. 18.
Sometimes though, the history of data is hidden within the operating system that handles a vast amount of unseen information. Sometimes information can be
processed so many times that some data decay occurs as we discussed. I also noticed the NFC imagery is used within this work, and throughout your other work, can you expand on the reasoning for this? And can you speak to the choice of using NFC compared to QR codes?
FM:Right so, visually I’m using NFC tags’ imagery of circuitry to start a conversation about technology. QR codes also convey technology imagery, such as pixels or
squares. The difference is a nuance in the visual language and also with how the technology operates. QR codes, which have woven themselves into products and artwork for years, are a readily recognized tool to convey information via phones.
NFC tags are a newer technology and they have more functions than QR codes are capable of. For example, NFC tags can be programmed to hold data, send data,
prompt data, and more. Visually they also speak through curves and not straight right angles like QR codes can’t avoid. Although I use both within my work, I am interested in developing work that pushes the boundaries and making visual content with new
technology. I’ve attached an image of an NFC tag as a reference. NFC technology is already within our daily lives, like
contactless phone pay, and soon it will be as mainstream as the QR code. Like subset_Moss Portal V: Learn from me, Centering Information with Walnut Burl, also utilizes an NFC tag to convey
additional information, in this case a link to a study about why burls occur in trees.
Attached is a photo of the work and a detail shot (Figure 10 & 11).
Figure 10. Detail, Centering Information with Walnut Burl, 2022, walnut veneer, glass, nfc tag, silver paper 14”x32”x2”
(left)
Figure 11.
Centering Information with Walnut Burl, 2022, walnut veneer, glass, nfc tag, silver paper 32inx14in (below)
OC:Thank you for that information. I wonder about how QR codes and NFC tags will evolve as well.
SMT: I think it’s time Felicity, thank you for sharing your thoughts and work with the group. It’s nice to see some of the research from the past two years of your studies.
TB:Yes I enjoyed your material studies very much.
OC:Agreed. Please update us with further developments.
FM:I definitely will. Thank you all for spending time with me to have this conversation. Thank you SMT for gathering us. I will keep in touch.
subset_soil-circle-copper-growth (detail), 2022, little stem grass, soil, glass, copper 12”x12”x.5”
Near Field Communication Thesis Exhibition installation photos, detail left
Near Field Communication Thesis Exhibition installation photos, detail right
Bibliography
Bryan R Sebok. “The Zombie Archive: Theorizing Aura and Digital Decay.” Spectator (Los Angeles, Calif.) 33, no. 2 (2013): 38–.
Dietsch, Philipp, Steffen Franke, Bettina Franke, Andreas Gamper, and Stefan Winter.
“Methods to Determine Wood Moisture Content and Their Applicability in Monitoring Concepts.” Journal of civil structural health monitoring 5, no. 2 (2014): 115–127.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall.Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific
Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. First edition. Minneapolis, Minnesota:
Milkweed Editions, 2013. Print.
Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism : a Manifesto. London ;: Verso, 2020.
Tunick, Susan, Sandra Scofield, and Terry Palmiter. “History of a Tile Tradition.”
Essay. In Tile Roofs of Alfred: A Clay Tradition in Alfred, NY. Friends of Terra Cotta Press, 1993.
