The Taxonomy of Trash is a collaboration between myself, Austen Brown, Carlos Avendaño, and Raul Romero. In essence it is a collection of found objects collected during a residency at RAIR on October 9, 2011

During a one-day residency at the Revolution Recovery recycling center in Philadelphia, I selected 140 objects from the millions that come through there every day. My approach was to find and document objects that were beautiful without the need to be altered —sculpture that was made without any human intent. Each object was photographed and the sounds it could produce were recorded by installing microphones in the objects and then dropping, hitting, playing and warping them.

The photographs were sent to a biologist who categorized them using the Phylogenetic Tree of Life. This divided them into categories primarily based on the material compounds found in each object. This categorization shows the connections between the objects and their development The sounds have been used to create musical tracks that will accompany the project.

The end product is a visual, intellectual and aural celebration of garbage.

More information about this work can be found at http://www.taxonomyoftrash.com