Constellation is an electroacoustic work for 16 speakers in a grid. It was commissioned by Suzanne Fiol and Stephan Moore at experimental music venue Issue Project Room, as part of the 2007 "Points in a Circle" festival. I was honored to play the last curated evening at IPR's famous silo, with Richard Chartier also on the bill. Constellation explores the idea, floated by Bachelard, Marinetti, and others, that radio waves never stop vibrating, but simply migrate elsewhere. I started thinking about global radio waves, cell phone transmissions, all electrical sounds ever produced whether by radio, telephone, or stereo. And I imagined flying around the outer atmosphere, through sparkling stars and clusters of sounds; I might easily fly back through a cluster in which case I'd hear the sound again, forwards, backwards or sideways. I also imagined that each speaker could be an alien, a harmless creature emitting its own sound in the universe. I built the performance software for Constellation in Max/MSP/Jitter. In performance, I moved the wind and radio sounds around in predictable and unpredictable ways; each speaker was also given its own alien, beautiful vibrating tone and sounded based upon "game of life" software. The performance took place with the audience in concentric circles facing away from me, towards evening shadows played upon the walls.

19 minutes, 29 seconds