Prelude was commissioned by the Anita Cheng Dance Company. The imagery of the dance work, and its accompanying video, is rippling. In performance, a video surface “ripples” where the dancer steps. I imagined several types of “rippling” in sound: the rippling of radio waves through the air (as they are popularly imagined), and the rippling effect in sound created through low-frequency granular techniques. With these sound images in mind, I “harvested” a radio frequency over a 24-hour period, using a time-lapse recording technique. I re-assembled the time-lapse fragments using a “slow granulation” technique.

photo:performance still from Prelude at the Cunningham Studio, NYC.
dancer: Janet Charleston
video: Ronaldo Kiel