Sunken Landscape: thread of light (2020)

Instrumentation: percussion trio – three bass drums, each prepared with six electric bass strings, vibrators, aluminum foil, and coins

Commissioned and premiered by line upon line percussion as a winner of Call for Project Proposals 2020.

Duration: 18’

Program note:

The internet is ubiquitous but largely experienced as immaterial. Often it is experienced like a ghost or spirit; an invisible, ethereal animating force rapidly reshaping what we think of as reality.
While composing "Sunken Landscape: thread of light", I was struck by descriptions of the physical infrastructure that makes the internet function. I knew nothing about the fiber optic cables buried at the bottom of the ocean which allow the internet to function across continents. These extremely thin cables send patterns of light across oceans, transmitting data. They create a web of wires wrapping around the world, like a sunken land-bridge. Our experiences, conversations, hopes, dreams, and intimate secrets are transmitted from one continent to another through these thin threads of light; they bind the world together in this strange, beautiful, and terrifying way.