________ I think of this as an optimistic retelling of the story of the tower of Babel, one that affirms the hope and nobility of the tribes of humankind. In this version the people of Shinar have their many languages imposed on them, but instead of dispersing civilization, the sound of so many forms of utterance is a source of beauty: the poetry of variation. The tower is usually depicted as a square, spiral fortress with a staircase on the outer edge -- here it becomes an idealized, opened form, the double helix, which both carries the treads of the tower, and illustrates the genetic center of all life and of all humanity.

________ This collaboration with sculptor David Henderson is to be the first of a series of public sound installations exploring the dynamic of personal identity as it collides with location and time. I am fascinated by how one is marked by one's place and surroundings, and the cognitive richness of that little red arrow on the tourist map that indicates one’s position in the universe at any given moment.