Piano Field

Piano Field is a multi-sectional electroacoustic composition created in response to a series of paintings by Ellen Salk. The materials of the work are acoustic recordings of an acoustic piano played by bowing and strumming the strings. There are 34 bowed piano tones spanning the entire range of the piano. The sound work activates the architectural space in which the paintings are displayed by suspending the quotidian sonic environment of the museum and slowing time to an oceanic scale. By creating this slow-moving contemplative sonic space, I hope to enrich the experience of Ellen’s paintings, in which a vertigo-inducing centripetal force pulls the viewer inexorably towards a vibrant center.

Piano Field was commissioned by Ellen Salk for the exhibition Synaesthesia: Manifestations of Energy, opening February 2, 2013 at the Oceanside Museum of Art