All That Is Solid

All That Is Solid Melts Into Air is a transmission work produced especially for Maximilian Goldfarb's Deep Cycle (2010). The piece takes its title from a text of the same name by Marshall Berman, a treatise on the modern world and how we may see ourselves within it. The piece replicates the process imagined in the title by composing a map consisting of 17 layers ranging from geological regions to social architectures to media networks. The map layers are then encoded to sound through a protocol for transmission of images over radio known as slow-scan television, or SSTV. The piece re-interprets the solid as air by encoding, transmitting, receiving and decoding the map. Through this process, the physical boundaries depicted on the map's layers become distorted through their interaction with the actual space they intend to represent.