The Nature of the 102nd Thing (of 10,000) is a 4 channel electroacoustic sound sculpture built on an architectural model, rather than a traditional musical structure. Physical forms moving and changing in time are embodied by spatialized sounds. The title and inspiration develop out of an ancient Taoist definition of infinity: 10,000 was considered to be a large enough number that it was not necessary to count beyond it: “the 10,000 things” meant “the known Universe” or “the boundary beyond which it is not necessary to imagine”. This piece chronicles the effort to exceed boundaries, to defy the mind's fishtank of self-imposed limitation. As a child I walked along a wall on my way to school every day. I did not wonder what was behind the wall: for me it was the unquestioned limit of the world. Walking the same path many years later, what is unfamiliar is not that everything seems small in relation to my greater height, but that the world is so much larger, because the horizon is extended by my larger curiosity. The universe of the path and the wall has become an islet, swamped in the understanding of maps and land ownership. As my notion of 10,000 has been redefined, the edges of the world have fled steadily outward; and so this piece unfolds in time as a series of spinning circles of sound energy, pressing against the walls, barely contained and transected by creaking wooden joints.

our words became parts of the landscape is a multichannel electroacoustic composition composed for Diapason Gallery. Field recordings of large objects falling over, small objects being built and over 700 churchbells from England and Europe (courtesy of bell tuner Bill Hibbert, UK) are layered, melded and variously manipulated to form shapes and colors in space. The effort in this piece and much of my recent work is to try to make sound visible and physically palpable. Multichannel audio is useful in this regard, although technology is only a part of it. I have found the need to concentrate more on the phenomenological relationships between the sounds and the narratives that lead them than the techniques of placement or digital processing. I have approached this work as an abstract painter, not as a composer (a large debt of gratitude owed to the late Morton Feldman).

Douglas Henderson has been composing and performing in New York City and internationally for more than 20 years with a variety of musicians: David Watson, John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, and Guy Yarden to mention a few. He has composed music for numerous dance works, often involving extensive speaker installations, including pieces by choreographers Jeremy Nelson, Luis Lara, Tim Feldmann, Mia Lawrence, Jennifer Munson, and Nina Martin. He has toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe in various duo and trio formations performing original work. He studied composition and theory with Elie Yarden, Milton Babbitt, Paul Lansky, and J.K. Randall. He received his Doctoral and Master's degrees in Music Composition from Princeton University and recently chaired the Sonic Arts Department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was a 2002 Artist in Residence at Harvestworks, NYC and a guest artist for Cabinet Magazine. He received the 1998 New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie") for his collaboration with composer Guy Yarden and choreographer Mia Lawrence in Kriyas. He also designs and builds experimental instruments, such as the double-neck and 8-string guitars employed by Elliott Sharp; the "Guitrums", hybrid bass drums strung with amplified bass and guitar strings for sculptor Jude Tallichet and poet Barbara Barg; and the electric harp employed by Zeena Parkins. His most recent sound installation work, What Could Replace Opus?, is a giant harp employing 8 piano-wire strings, 35-65 feet long, stretched 20 feet in the air across an atrium at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, activated by computer-controlled motors and using the building structure as a resonant body. His work can be heard on "an ear for a leg -- music from dance" available from Electronic Music Foundation, at www.cdemusic.org/

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