Cities Are Natural proposed the idea of performance and music events as an urban congregation. Experimental noise, drone, and techno music worked in tandem with interactive installation visuals to invoke how human’s play, contemplate, and create in their habitat.

Cities are natural spanned three site-specific spaces: Stream Art Space in Bushwick, a residency at Pioneer Works with Clock Tower Radio, and another residency on Governors Island with the Public Works Department. Clarke collaborated with others to create interactive installations and performances. She also incorporated architectural and sonic data collected from the respective neighborhoods. The installations incorporated materials such as: glass, laser cut paper, reactive and interactive visual and sounds reflecting the environment with speculative elements. 

During the Pioneer Works residency, there were three events, Compostions 1-3. For Composition 3, the last event of the residency, Clarke collaboraed with curators Christine Tran (Witches of Bushwick and Discwoman) and Mike Sheffield(She was Freaks), as well as Sara Rothberg (Interactive media artist) and Sue Ngo (Interactive artist and designer) to present an evening of performances and visuals inspired by the city as our natural habitat. In the main hall of the Pioneer Works building, Clarke and artist Sue Ngo constructed paper and wire structures, alongside small clusters of glass. Monica Mirabile of Fluct dance company choreographed performers to interact with these structures and sounds, engaging the architecture of the building, as well as the audience. These visuals were accompanied by sound acts from UMFANG, Volvox, WETWARE, Drippy Inputs, and Clarke. Throughout the event, Sara Rothberg presented a multichannel 3D interactive (driveable) animation on a large stretch of wall, that included some of Clarke’s data based visuals.

Composition 3

Monica Mirabile of Fluct dance company choreographed performers to interact with these structures and sounds, engaging the architecture of the building, as well as the audience.
(Video Stills by Joe Bender & Photographs by Luis Nieto Dinkins)

Clarke performs with glass, contact mics, feedback, vocals, sonnified data and field recordings taken from the Red Hook area. 
(Video Stills by Joe Bender & Photographs by Luis Nieto Dinkins)

Performances included Wetware and Volvox. Sara Rothberg presented a multichannel 3D interactive (driveable) animation on a large stretch of wall. (Video Stills by Joe Bender & Photographs by Luis Nieto Dinkins)

Composition 1, Performances were positioned in front of a transforming, sound reactive video projected on glass created by Clarke. Clarke, Leila Bordreuil and Byron Westbrook created sounds that integrate the building’s infrastructure and ideas of the city as natural. Melissa played glass, paper, and metal, along with field recordings and data taken from Red Hook and Pioneer Works. Soon there after, Leila Bordreuil played cello and overlapped the existing sounds with her own collage of texture variations, phantom overtones and sometimes pitched utterances, through a unique approach to amplification. Bordreuil’s work became prominent in the piece as Clarke's sound drifted out. Then, Byron Westbrook performed synthesized sounds influenced by the gestures of urban location recordings, responding to the performance space with dynamic layers of perceived space and time. The entirety of three performances became a single audio-visual composition recorded by Clocktower radio and captured within Clarke’s installation as visuals. 

Leila Bordreuil and Clarke perform. (Video Stills by Joe Bender)

The Governers Island Residency, Clarke brought the paper, glass and other aspects of 'cities' to the Island where she merged the three-dimensional space of the room with speculative three-dimensional renders that blurred the lines between the natural (water), architecture and other aspects of the city. During the residency on Governers Island, Clarke performed similar material as she did at Pioneer Works while bringing field recordings and data from the surrouding waters and urban/natural environment.

Governers Island. Cities Installation, Renders and Performance by Clarke

Stream Gallery in Bushwick Brooklyn. As part of the show Systematic Sampling Clarke created the sculptural installation version of the series in a miniature form. It was self contanined and created to be in conversation with the works of other artists in the gallery. Melissa collaborated with Sue Ngo who designed the laser cut paper with burned edges. This was the first iteration of the series that began as a thread in the network of the installations, performances and documentation that unfolded across several years and spaces. The light movements within the small installation were taken from local data samples and became the bones of the sounds and visuals of the series.

Stream Gallery, Bushwick. Glass, Paper, Video and Platform.