New media artist Jessica Reisch didn’t begin her career fully embracing her artistic interests and practice. She was an educator, teaching third grade, and gradually moved into nonprofit arts education.
“It was around that time that I started … doing a little bit of animation and some video work,” Reisch said. “I’d always had a practice as a hobby, but not something that I took very seriously.”
Taking it seriously, though, led Reisch to some incredible places pretty quickly. First, she fell in love with animation. Then, she went back to school and earned her MFA in Computer Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2024. A year later, she received a 2025 Fulbright ETA Award to teach at the West University of Timișoara, Romania.
She just returned from there, and she’ll head back this fall. In between, she plans to do some deep listening during her residency at Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture. Reisch has a combination of an experimental film practice and a sound practice. Together, they turn into immersive audio/visual installations wherein Reisch uses specialized tools to engage with the environment.
“I use hydrophones that allow me to record from under the water and geophones, which record from in the earth, and then I shoot a lot of experimental video with cameras,” Reisch said. “I’m also really interested in microscopy work, so I often take small samples from the earth and from the water and shoot it from under the microscope.”
The goal? To look and listen to the world “with a deepness,” Reisch said, “that sort of falls outside my human purview.”
For example, her 2026 work Primordial Attending, which combines research, poetry from three artists and site-specific footage from Summer Lake with a soundscape created from field recordings taken within the waters of the lake and the cracks of nearby mudflats. Immersion in the piece invites reflection on both the plight of the Northern Paiute people — the original stewards of the land — and the area’s ecosystem, which is threatened by local agricultural practices.
“The experience of using these tools to look and listen is where I find a lot of meaning in my own existence. I find (it) to be kind of disorienting and reorienting in a way that feels necessary to me sometimes,” Reisch said.
“Especially as the world becomes crazier and harder to live in,” she continued, “stepping outside of my body and into the land allows me to feel what it means to be not human and human at the same time in a way that kind of restores my sanity.”
Jessica Reisch will lead a workshop, “Field Sounds,” on Tuesday, Aug. 25 from 4-6 p.m. at The Ranch. Attendees will go join the artist on a site-specific sound walk and engage with the environment in an imaginative and expansive format. Registration costs $10.
Reisch will also participate in the Studio Tour alongside fellow residents Maxim Loskutoff and Nina Elder on Thursday, Aug. 27 from 5-6:30 p.m. at The Ranch.
