Gathered on the Brooklyn side of the East River, children were asked: "What is something we all want and need?" They answered: water. That answer anchors Line in Surround Sound Surrounded in Line, an ongoing participatory project where youth and adults observe water and environment, listen, and bring what they notice into collective mark-making and sound.

Participants gather in a room filled with a soundscape of water and meditative voice instructions. Using elongated brushes, they collaborate on gestural line drawings on recycled packing paper, marks fluid, reflecting the water they observed. Cameras capture accumulating marks and project them onto surrounding walls in real time. Individual marks become shared. The voice guide offers invitations: "Your lines are your own, you have autonomy." "Can you intersect another person's lines?" Our movement and our stillness determine the rhythm of our experience.

Each iteration feeds the next. Collaborating musician Hank Moore led children through songwriting exercises, blues with its deep roots in water, rivers, the uncontrollable power of nature. The song they wrote together — "This is something we've all got / this is something we all get / sunshine, water" — plays in later gatherings. High schoolers interview people from different generations about their favorite places to be near water in the city, record sounds at Naval Cemetery Landscape, and build animations and soundscapes from what they gather.

Through gatherings and reflections on water, connection emerges across the city, across generations. The project accumulates: sounds echoing, footage layering, a single channel video growing alongside the work. Each gathering ends in stillness, breathing together, the voice guide's closing invitation: "Notice the essence of the collaboration."

Iterations: High school iteration in progress (2025-2026); Spring/Break Art Show, NYC, with curator Alva Calymayor (2023); The Painted Cloud studio, Brooklyn (2021, 2023).