Messagefield is a long-term conceptual art project by Elizabeth Hoak-Doering. It explores the potential for natural forces like wind and water to transmit meaning. Using specially designed apparatuses, the project captures movements in the environment — such as from wind, trees, or water — and translates them into graphite images.

The project began in 2002 with wind drawing installations for the Sixth International Armenian Biennale. The project’s poetic and geopolitical approach came from a question about catching unseen “messages” carried on the wind over Mount Ararat (now in Turkey) into modern Armenia.

Between 2002 and 2006, Messagefield performances took place in symbolically charged locations: on the Bosphorus, Mount Denali, and the Acropolis. They record meaningful durations of time — lunar eclipses, hurricanes, and births — blurring boundaries between drawing and writing, time and place. Messagefield drawings also reflect on liminal zones and politically contested spaces, suggesting new ways of documenting temporal thresholds, tidal zones, and social history.

In 2011, selections from Messagefield were shown in the Cyprus Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale of Art along with Amanuensis. One of the drawings inspired the poem ‘Occlusionary’ by Julia Bloch, included in Valley Fever (Sidebrow Books, 2015).