We Are Nature: Living in the Anthropocene, Carnegie Museums

Here are a few of my favorite pieces from a virtual exhibit for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History which I recorded, sound designed and mixed. The sound effect source material includes a 2019 recording of arctic glaciers shifting and falling.

You can view the full VR experience here https://ocul.us/31C0ZNB

42 Million Moments is audio collage depicting a life journey. Nearly 80 years of life - 42 million moments - condensed into 187 seconds. It includes a sample from The Books titled IDKT.

It was commissioned as part of Bricolage’s immersive theater piece STRATA, which was featured on the July 2013 cover of American Theatre Magazine.

Throughout the STRATA experience, participants were led individually to a series of vastly different rooms - a doctor’s office, a monk’s room, a poker room, a backyard with a swing, etc. - where they interacted with actors. Though I gathered sounds for many of these locations, my main contribution to this adventure was the Life Room.

One of the last stops on the audience journey was The Life Room, a whitewashed nook containing only a chair and a speaker.  My job was to fill it with life. Specifically, I was asked to spend one week creating a three-minute soundscape representing a life-to-death journey.

The Liar

Here, I added some spunk to Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto in C for Kinetic Theatre's production of The Liar.

The script was delightful. David Ives translated this 17th century French play into modern English, using iambic pentameter. The result was a hilarious mashup of old and new, echoed by the set, costume and sound designs.

Time Trouble

In Time Trouble by Adam Arena & Maddox O’Neill, two middle schoolers travel back in time to interview Olympic medalist Jesse Owens, but when their time machine goes awry, they find themselves surrounded by dinosaurs and cavemen. This sound design includes a quick trip through music history and a lot of electromagnetic sounds.

SOUND DESIGNER & DEVISER JH: Mechanics of a Legend, Hiawatha Project

JH: Mechanics of a Legend examines the Reconstruction Era through the legend of John Henry and machine metaphors. I was part of the team that spent two years researching, devising the script and creating a full stage production.

In the story's climax, John Henry races a steam drill through the mountain, and sound becomes the most important onstage presentation of the machine. The characters sing with and against the clattering mechanical beat I created from real machine sounds.