Undercurrents
They descended
into the sound
el ruego
es el riego
water of life
—Cecilia Vicuña
Constructed as an underground echo chamber of voice and light, Undercurrents creates an ever-shifting network of connections across time, space, and meaning.
Built in 1926 and covering a vast 87,500 square foot area, the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern is a remarkable urban infrastructure that provides a colossal, romantic, and enigmatic context for large-scale interactive art experiences.
A seemingly endless "switchboard" of connection unfolds throughout the cistern, where participant voices are transformed into pulses of light that travel along branching paths. Connected to this network are eight custom-made intercoms, each consisting of a microphone, a speaker, and a push button, placed at regular intervals along the perimeter. When a visitor presses an intercom button and speaks, their message is encoded into modulations of light brightness and visually transmitted along a path that may fork at any given cistern column (a "node"), bouncing and traveling steadily until it reaches another intercom, where it plays back slightly mixed with echoes of voices from the past.
Along the way, an AI system looks for matching patterns in an archive of recordings, including commissioned poems by poets Nick Flynn, Aris Kian, Martha Serpas, Jennifer Teets, and Roberto Tejada. With each new voice, an "echo" is produced from this memory, so that each message carries traces of what came before, blending into a poetic soundscape. At any given time, up to twelve participants can be sending and receiving voice messages live, setting the cistern alight with glimmering paths. If no one is participating, the piece begins to trigger itself automatically, as if dreaming, playing back curated voices and recalling earlier exchanges. A "timekeeper" wave of light is also periodically activated, scanning the entire space to clear any stranded messages.
The project features over 420,000 light pixels, controlled by a single custom-made computer program. The archive of curated voices includes audio recordings from sources such as PennSound and the High Performance Sound Technologies for Access and Scholarship repository (University of Texas), featuring readings by poets from Texas such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Rosa Alcalá, Tino Villanueva, Emmy Pérez, Harryette Mullen, and Michael Snedicker, as well as Texas-based readings of poets including Alice Notley, John Taggart, and Urayoán Noel.
Undercurrents engages the cistern's natural reverberation to suggest that communication is never neutral. It is shaped by space, perception, and history. The cistern becomes an audiovisual forum where fleeting expressions of presence—of being here, now, together—are made tangible.
To participate, visitors press the button and speak into one of eight intercoms placed around the cistern. Their message will be recorded and added to the archive, where it may be triggered as an echo for future visitors.
Along the way I discovered a voice, a sun-stroked path
choked with old light, a ray already blown.
—Peter Gizzi
into the sound
el ruego
es el riego
water of life
—Cecilia Vicuña
Constructed as an underground echo chamber of voice and light, Undercurrents creates an ever-shifting network of connections across time, space, and meaning.
Built in 1926 and covering a vast 87,500 square foot area, the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern is a remarkable urban infrastructure that provides a colossal, romantic, and enigmatic context for large-scale interactive art experiences.
A seemingly endless "switchboard" of connection unfolds throughout the cistern, where participant voices are transformed into pulses of light that travel along branching paths. Connected to this network are eight custom-made intercoms, each consisting of a microphone, a speaker, and a push button, placed at regular intervals along the perimeter. When a visitor presses an intercom button and speaks, their message is encoded into modulations of light brightness and visually transmitted along a path that may fork at any given cistern column (a "node"), bouncing and traveling steadily until it reaches another intercom, where it plays back slightly mixed with echoes of voices from the past.
Along the way, an AI system looks for matching patterns in an archive of recordings, including commissioned poems by poets Nick Flynn, Aris Kian, Martha Serpas, Jennifer Teets, and Roberto Tejada. With each new voice, an "echo" is produced from this memory, so that each message carries traces of what came before, blending into a poetic soundscape. At any given time, up to twelve participants can be sending and receiving voice messages live, setting the cistern alight with glimmering paths. If no one is participating, the piece begins to trigger itself automatically, as if dreaming, playing back curated voices and recalling earlier exchanges. A "timekeeper" wave of light is also periodically activated, scanning the entire space to clear any stranded messages.
The project features over 420,000 light pixels, controlled by a single custom-made computer program. The archive of curated voices includes audio recordings from sources such as PennSound and the High Performance Sound Technologies for Access and Scholarship repository (University of Texas), featuring readings by poets from Texas such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Rosa Alcalá, Tino Villanueva, Emmy Pérez, Harryette Mullen, and Michael Snedicker, as well as Texas-based readings of poets including Alice Notley, John Taggart, and Urayoán Noel.
Undercurrents engages the cistern's natural reverberation to suggest that communication is never neutral. It is shaped by space, perception, and history. The cistern becomes an audiovisual forum where fleeting expressions of presence—of being here, now, together—are made tangible.
To participate, visitors press the button and speak into one of eight intercoms placed around the cistern. Their message will be recorded and added to the archive, where it may be triggered as an echo for future visitors.
Along the way I discovered a voice, a sun-stroked path
choked with old light, a ray already blown.
—Peter Gizzi
General info
French name:
Sous-courants
Year of creation:
2026
Technique:
White addressable LED flexible tube luminaires. 8 custom-made intercom interactive stations. Each has an outdoor microphone, a Bose speaker bar, and custom circuitry. 1 Computer, 1 media server, ethernet cables, DANTE sound protocol, speakers, software made in TouchDesigner and Python.
Power:
estimated at 45,000 W.
Keywords:
Credits
- Poets: Nick Flynn, Aris Kian, Martha Serpas, Jennifer Teets, Roberto Tejada
- Curation: Michael Nardone
- Software: Hugo Daoust, David Robert
- Hardware: William Sutton, Lauria Clarke
- Production: Emily Green, Hugo Daoust, David Robert, Stephan Schulz, Fenris Fabrication
- Project management: Weingarten Art Group
- Commissioned by: Buffalo Bayou Partnership
- Lead underwriting: The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation
- Major support provided by: John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation, VIA Art Fund, Paola and Arturo Creixell, Scott and Judy Nyquist
- Additional support provided by: Mara and Erick Calderon; Jereann Chaney; Bari and David Fishel, Marie Roberts Glover.
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