Jesse Black (b. 1996) is an artist and technician from Shawnee, Kansas, working with digital photography, audio recording, and video to explore the relationships between humanity, nature, and the greater cosmos. His current work re-envisions terrestrial surfaces as celestial landscapes, utilizing photography and short form video to create imaginary satellite footage. In addition, he produces field recordings from the prairies and forests of Kansas and Missouri.

These projects – Imaginal Space Travel and Transmissions respectively – seek to move beyond spectatorship and recognize that humans don’t live adjacent to the world or to one another. We are in fact deeply involved, connected and reliant on these relationships. While it’s easy to fixate on what it is we might by seeing or hearing, these projects aim to shift that curiosity toward why we overlook these landscapes and sounds in daily life.

Jesse has studied lighting and projection design for the performing arts as well as digital photography at Johnson County Community College. Jesse is the Technical Director and Studio Manager at Phosphor Studio, a full service production studio in the Crossroads Arts District in downtown Kansas City, providing services for video production, audio production, and immersive experiences.