Lincoln Park Conservatory
Chicago, IL
2026
All images by Aly Camacho
unless noted
Regina, aka selective listening, thinks a lot about the sounds that have marked her existence. Semi-trucks along Interstate-44, interlaced with her father’s sleeping breath – memories reassembled and played back in unpredictable combinations. In commemoration of Florasonic’s 25th year, the artist envisioned a story guided by sounds that mark the Fern Room itself. The feeling of water. Varying footsteps. Soft air rubbing through leaves. Overhearing a mother say to her children: when everything burns, ferns are first to grow back.
Florasonic 25th Anniversary:
Jenn Grossman, Ótal, & Regina Martinez with Mario V. Martinez
To preserve the sound of you
four-channel site-specific sound composition
29:14 min.
To preserve the sound of you is an interior reflection of the textures and voices who come together within the Lincoln Park Conservatory. The many sensations we may encounter on a journey to the glasshouse, arranged and superimposed back into the room. It is a collaborative work with her brother Mario Martinez – multi-instrumentalist and member of archival record label Paradise Is a Frequency. Mario specializes in a soundworld that keeps us company while we wait—on hold, in elevators, over department store audio systems and behind video game menu screens. Music at the confluence of material and immaterial, accompanying our in-between moments, as present as breath.
Gratitude to: Experimental Sound Studio, Lincoln Park Conservatory staff Matthew Barrett, Sebastian Ritte, and especially Adriana Gonzalez and the Visitor Services team.
Special thank you to the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Alejandro Ayala, Lori Mendoza, Irene Hsiao, sophie lipman, Carlie Trosclair, Jared Brown, Lauren Williams, Kikù Hibino, isra rene, Maddie Le Cesne, joelle mercedes, A.J. McClenon, lareisa, Anth, mom, dad, Aly Camacho, & always elijah
Mana Contemporary
Chicago, IL
2023
overhearings
overhearings is a sound story originally created in Chicago for the restroom recesses of the Mana Contemporary building. Two of the city’s institutions, Monira Foundation and Experimental Sound Studio, commissioned the piece in response to lineages of Peregrine Falcons who have lived on the building’s structure for over two decades. The Chicago Peregrine Program monitors the falcons to better understand their proximity to the human-built environment. Bracelet banding of the lower legs enables scientists to study each bird’s lifespan and dispersal. The banding occurs when chicks are around 24 days old. They have reached full size and do not yet have their feathers to fly.
Habitat loss as well as the effects of the insecticide DDT, have led to the Peregrine’s decline and our subsequent recovery efforts. Environmental regulations eventually restricted pesticides like DDT, and humans have bred thousands of falcons in captivity to keep them from their endangered status.
Guided by an imagined conversation between two Peregrines, my grandmother and the wind - overhearings, for me, is a rendering of human-centered compassion, projection, and what it is to protect what we ourselves endanger.
Ucross, Wyoming
2024
.. .. under construction .. ..