I'm interested in hands as the producers of a kind of topology of the universe — everything we see, we touch, we push on, we look at, we shape in some way or another. We move through the world and change it, in big ways and small. Not all of these impacts are clearly legible. They don't look like objects or even hands. Instead they're nudges; shapes; spaces left behind. What are ways of making that kind of push and pull visible? How can we read the residue and signals of something that has happened — a person who was here and who did something and who is now gone? How does someone decipher those signals?

I'm a journalist, and my job is to do that kind of work — piece together what happened and why it matters after the fact. My job is to enter a story and talk to people who have been made and remade — who have made choices, and reacted to other people's decisions, and been forced to change whether they want to or not. Sometimes they remember everything vividly. Other times they can barely recall a thing. Sometimes they remember the small details — the color of the wall, the song that was playing on the radio, the name of someone's dogs — but they core elements are hazy. How do I, as a reporter, wade through and understand all those nuances?

Not only am I meant to answer that question. I'm also meant to do so while remaining invisible. I'm supposed to work through a story and leave nothing behind. To flow through, unseen, while I capture it all to communicate to the audience.

The concrete basin — shaped by pushing and pulling and grabbing and punching and pinching — contains stories. I'm the water, moving through that basin, trying to touch every corner. I flow through the concrete, trying to remember what I learned from the basin as I move across the metal plate and eventually create my own version of the story via the pile of dry concrete waiting on the ground. Each rock that is produced is a kind of retelling — a version of the basin. Of the story. It's imperfect. Incomplete. A ghost of a ghost.

But of course, reporters are people too. We influence the stories with our perspectives, and we are influenced in turn. The water leaves behind a kind of topology of its own. Each time the I flow through a story, I leave behind a little bit of myself. I am changed, and eroded, and built up all at once.