Twelve hundred piano strings reach from floor to ceiling in Large String Array, transforming the Jack Straw New Media Gallery into an automatic resonant instrument that plays a story of life in a pandemic. An ensemble of twelve discrete voices reverberates throughout the room, each pulled directly from the windows, walls and wires of Cameron's home while sheltered in place. Custom high-gain amplifiers and contact microphones were developed to listen in to faint transmissions of daily life. Large String Array reimagines this cloistered soundscape as a tone poem transfigured through steel wire.

The story of quarantine sounds out through the tension of home when it is both cage and privilege, a refuge coated with a thin membrane of isolation. The early eerie quiet of pandemic gives way to the protests against police violence and systemic racism — the whisper of social distance becomes the screams for social justice. The sounds of stillness and rage and pain join together in this meditation on isolation and solidarity. 

Cameron Perry Fraser is a composer, sculptor, engineer and sound artist who designs handmade acoustic/electric instruments, digital interfaces and sonorous instillations. His work often employs ecoacoustic strategies, indeterminate methods and feedback systems. Cameron is currently a Doctoral Candidate at DXARTS, University of Washington. He received his masters from Columbia University's Sound Arts program and worked at Columbia’s Computer Music Center