Inspired by Gertrude Stein’s poem “What Do I See,” this installation combines sound, text, video, and social practice to re-imagine the town of Milton, Pennsylvania, through the lenses of its residents and in relation to a “foreign currency” of sounds and sights. Today I Saw creates an archive of sights seen in Milton and puts the town in a global context, bringing descriptions of local sights into contact with two other sources: a video of a man pruning land in Italy, and a sound recording of bombs dropping in Syria. The exhibition collects everyday sights and utilizes juxtaposition to open up questions about the visible, the invisible, and the interconnected nature of the world. Although situated in the Milton Art Bank, the installation spans the length of the town; sound recordings of people describing sights are dispersed across Milton and maps that locate the sound pods are available at the bank. People can also come to the bank to “deposit” their own site-specific sights, contributing to the archive.

Maya Pindyck examines intimate intersections of memory, place, language, and the (in)visibility of bodies in cultural spaces. She is the author of Emoticoncert (Four Way Books, 2016), Friend Among Stones (New Rivers Press, 2009), and Locket, Master (Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, 2006). She exhibits her visual, sound, and text-based work widely. Her scholarship on creative practices, social justice and schooling has been published in a range of academic journals. In 2005, she co-founded an abortion story archive, Project Voice. Pindyck earned her PhD in English education from Columbia University's Teachers College, her MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and her BA in studio art and philosophy from Connecticut College. She lives in Brooklyn and is an Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts/Writing and Director of Writing at Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia.