wool and water

excerpt

Composed: 1999
Duration: 3'20"

Program Notes

An excerpt from wool and water, a sound installation I created for the Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston, Illinois. The installation was based on Chapter V of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, in which Alice finds herself in a shop with a sheep behind the counter. Every time Alice attempts to focus on something on one of the shelves, to see if she wants to buy it, the object moves out of her vision. In this installation, I used granular synthesis and other techniques to engulf the audience in constantly moving, unidentifiable sounds. Audience members could interact with the installation through a MIDI keyboard, and the system captured their input for subsequent playback (sometimes days later).