Prairie Dreams (2026)
multichannel sound installation or concert presentation

Hope is here! Prairie Dreams includes our personal recordings of the endangered Rusty-Patched Bumblebee (Bombus affinus), as it forages amongst flowering plants on a reclaimed prairie. The bee decouples its wings to accomplish what is called ‘buzz pollination’ in order to loosen difficult to access pollen. You will hear this unique vibration that she, the Queen bee, creates. Additional sound elements are derived from the research and development of our video game, Dreaming The Prairie that addresses critical habitat loss resulting from the expansion of Rockford Illinois airport, which destroyed the prairie ecosystem that once was home to the federally-protected bee.
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This is our second co-produced multichannel audio work. Perhaps a good way to think of it is that it is an abstraction of an abstraction, collaged with field recordings of real bumblebees using buzz pollination techniques at an Illinois prairie. As before, I (Jay) handled the sound design and engineering, and we co-produced the final mix.
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The original version is an eight channel surround work, first presented at Burning Man 2026 by UNPOP, a curatorial project by Stephan Michael Moore and Scott Smallwood. The two channel version was made to facilitate streaming on the internet.
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[The background image is a screenshot from gameplay in the interactive work Dreaming The Prairie.]