Drops of Water

  • Dana Melaver

  • Drops of Water

  • “Dana Melaver is an internationally-based artist, working predominantly in installation and camera-based arts. Often working collaboratively and with subject matter from the sciences, Dana’s pieces offer expanded pathways for human experience. At times stern, at times humorous, most often both. Dana is expected to receive her BFA from Parsons School of Design, and has been exhibited in New York City, Berlin, and China.”
    A drop of water can tell so much about ourselves. It is, like us, a composite of moving parts. It is atoms which bonds together, and minerals picked up along the way. It is the story of every rock encountered and bend passed. It was a tear, a bead of sweat, a drop of rain on someone’s neck. With every second that passes, this water drop changes itself. So do we.
    My thesis project is an experimental documentary film, which looks at sustainable aquaculture practice as a way to think about our definition of self. In observing bacterial clusters in fish tanks, their symbiotic relationship with animals, the frequency with which they transform their entire structure, we may reconsider our own sense of being. The film composites documentary footage and performances. These performances interpret the dynamism of bacterial cluster and aquatic symbiosis into human bodies. In doing so, the expansion of self prevalent in nature is offered to the rigidly defined “human.”