Robert Lundberg’s “United States Route 163.”
An exhibit by the musician and photographer Rob Lundberg will launch the UW-Madison Center for the Humanities’ Terra Incognita art series, which highlights the work of artists exploring the current ecological epoch — the Anthropocene — during which humans have had the greatest influence on the environment and climate.
Alongside his “Bearings” photo collection, Lundberg, who is also a stand-up bassist, will lead a sextet playing his original compositions at 7 p.m. on Oct. 7 at the Central Library.
Lundberg, a Milwaukee native, was a bit of an outsider in a family of visual artists because he pursued a musical path.
“I’ve always been inclined to that sort of visual language,” Lundberg says. “I just enjoy bouncing around.”
He earned a BFA at New York City’s New School, focusing on experimental, improvised and contemporary classical music with jazz and rock leanings. Afterward, Lundberg spent a few years playing, recording and touring. On the road, he picked up photography as a way to connect with the places he passed through.
During a stay in New Mexico, Lundberg was caught off guard by the deserted, nearly lunar landscapes. He began to view the winding two-lane roads as functional sculptures.
“What if the idea of the highway was not just to get you from point A to point B, but to allow you to experience these strange, alien landscapes?” he asks.
This new vantage point awakened in him a passion for environmental issues and conserving natural spaces. It also pointed him down the path of the scholar. Lundberg is now enrolled in law school and the master’s program at UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute, a hotbed of interdisciplinary academic research on environmental science.
His photography, which captures images such as cracked blacktops lined with sand and vanishing into the vast blue horizon, explores the interaction of humans and natural spaces through infrastructure. Lundberg says roads and dams, for instance, are physical manifestations of society’s culture and beliefs.
Alongside his photos, Lundberg will add another layer of perspective through nontraditional sound arrangements.
The other musicians will be dispersed throughout the gallery among the photos; gallery visitors will experience different sounds depending on their physical locations. Lundberg’s compositions explore minimalism through gradual development of simple technical and melodic ideas.
“It creates a very different, more meditative space as a performer and hopefully as listener, rather than a more traditionally evolving composition,” Lundberg says.
The Terra Incognita Art Series opens at 7 p.m. on Madison Gallery Night, Oct. 7, at Madison Central Library’s Bubbler Gallery.
