Heart of the Diameter (fragment)

(electronics/percussion interlude fragment for San José City Hall's Sonic Runway)

This is one of the four interludes of "Heart of the Diameter", a large format piece for flute, soprano, saxophone, baritone saxophone, violin, percussion, and spatialized electronics, soon to be released in the Holography Records interactive audio label. Video by Rob Jensen.

The interlude portion in this video was my contribution to the Invisible Skies flash public art event conceived and produced by ET Studios in the San Jose City Hall in January 31st, 2026. The piece was played in the City Hall's Sonic Runway, created by a team of artists including lead artist Rob Jensen, co-lead Warren Trezevant, and design by Stockhausen. Sonic Runway is a light-art installation that visualizes the speed of sound.

The connection between the public patterns inherent to a flash art event like Invisible Skies and my piece, Heart of the Diameter, lies in the intricacies of random motion. The trajectories and velocities of hundreds or thousands of people, without the prescription to be synchronized, are in some ways the same as the melodic patterns that emerge from the controlled randomness that I designed for the music. This was very clear to me from the moment I first discussed the project with Elizabeth Turk, the lead artist of the project. In contrast to that aspect of beautiful asymmetrical patterns emerging from the random motion of the public and the sounds of Heart of the Diameter, there is the perfect synchronization of the sounds of the music with the visual patterns emanating from the San Jose City Hall’s Sonic Runway. The juxtaposition between a steady, repetitive pulsing vibration and a multiplicity of rhythms and durations was beautifully clarified by the patterns of light displayed on the runway.