Parallel Paths is an exploration and experimental project studying paths created by bark beetles. Bark Beetles are a pest found in trees across California and widely across the United States and eat their way through trees underneath the bark creating intricate patterns and ultimately destroying forests. Using a 3D scanner and cell phone, images of paths created in the bark by the beetles were captured and translated into polygonal meshes, the mathematical representation of a collection of vertices, edges, and faces that define their shape in the real world. Each mesh was examined to reveal paths that shared visual similarities to the streets in the Long Beach as well as the greater Los Angeles highway system. Pointing to specific places of flow, obstruction, and planned versus haphazard pathways, the bark beetle’s paths are meant as metaphorical reference to our own human building patterns. Utilizing the red and cyan principles in visual 3D anaglyphs, as the viewer walks past the windows, elements of each path are highlighted, hidden, or revealed to the viewer through the colored film circles ultimately calling to the mark making and pathways being created all around us that we as humans fail to consider.
Visit the Window display by artist Brittany Ransom at the Avana on Pine located at 250 Pacific Ave.