The digital form of this archive is still under construction. This link (wave1 ) represents in-process work.
I’ve proposed to collect waves, which has resulted so far in a mass of digital video. The video, shot in the surf, captures ocean waves breaking along the east side of Block Island, RI.
In some ways the video documents waves, but what is also present is an encounter–meeting the wave in its breaking state. What’s captured by the video is a temporal window, a loop of that encounter.
How to catalog this collection presents the most significant challenge to the project. Physical attributes of the waves might be logical limits for a catalog, as well as location, and maybe even duration—the time elapsed from the wave’s peak to the veil of foam that reaches the beach and finally recedes back towards the ocean. 
However, the experience of being in the wave–having it pass over one’s body, or collect (catch) the body in its forward momentum–seems to so far delimit this archive.
This project proposes to explore what it means to collect something that resists collection.
Are the videos here simply part of a larger (continual?) energy transfer?
Since a wave is not a thing, but rather a disturbance or oscillation that moves through matter or space can that immateriality inform the archive’s catalog.
What does the wave have to do with origin?
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