A cyanotype of an aging yellow farmhouse, dwarfed by cottonwoods for flute and generative electronics (2021)

Our concepts of home are multiple and varied, culturally encoded and almost entirely dependent on context. To write a piece about “home,” as was requested by flutist Helen Threlkeld when the Lawrence University Flute Studio commissioned this work, is almost always actually to write a piece about a home or concept of home. Yet home is constantly shifting beneath our feet. It is tangible (for example, a house), intangible (think: the state of being “at home”), and somewhere in between (such as all the data on our hard drives). A cyanotype strives to live in this complex reality.

A cyanotype consists of an acoustic flute part and generative electronics patch, each made up of modules or “homes” inspired by one or multiple concepts of home (e.g. imagined, memorial). While every acoustic home has an electronic counterpart, the flutist and computer are not required to follow one another. Each is free to navigate this emergent maze of homes, so long as they arrive and depart together.