In Appalachia, where I grew up, the landscape is endlessly worked by technologies of extraction. Left behind is a scarred, soft ground. Physical information from that ground can be exposed at many scales by manipulating surveying and imaging technologies. By understanding bits as matter and landscapes as information, the resulting cartographies are defined, woven, and re-inserted.
In SOFT GROUNDS: #021," "043," and "081, I gathered photogrammetry data from the operational and decommissioned coal mines of my hometown which I then processed, manipulated, and unwrapped to reveal novel visions of the landscape. These visions are the result of a careful dialog between artist and machine- iterations of photography, physical manipulation, digital adjustment, and automatic image generation. A nod to the 1996 writing of David Nye, this series explores the idea of a new American Technological Sublime through deconstruction and re-presentation of hybrid technological and natural landscapes.

Breanna Browning is a media artist and creative director with studios in Los Angeles, California and her native rural Tennessee.

Breanna’s practice merges digital and physical matter through the misuse of technological tools and traditional methods of making. Her background in architecture and speculative fiction allows her to work simultaneously at multiple scales- from the bit to the body, from the landscape to the imaginary. Her varied practice includes image-based works, sculptures, immersive environments, writing, creative direction, films, and audiovisual performances.