In 1990, the federal government invited a group of geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, architects, artists, and writers to the New Mexico desert, to visit the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. They were there on a mission.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is the nation's only permanent underground repository for nuclear waste. Eventually, WIPP will be sealed up and left alone. Years will pass and those years will become decades. Those decades will become centuries and those centuries will roll into millennia. People above ground will come and go. Cultures will rise and fall. And all the while, below the surface, that cave full of waste will get smaller and smaller, until the salt caverns swallow up all those oil drums and entombs them. Then, all the old radioactive gloves and tools and little bits from bombs –all still radioactive– will be solidified in the earth's crust for more than 200,000 years. Basically forever.
The problem that the aforementioned panel was convened to address was how to convey this information to people 10,000 years in the future, when language and symbols may be so different as to make direct communication impossible.

99% Invisible-114- Ten Thousand Years

Infinity’s Reflection invokes feelings of nostalgia and reminiscence. A combination of both handbells and choir chimes provides a rich musical texture and gives ringers the extra challenge of frequently switching between the two different instruments. The chimes are meant to represent the mysterious pull of memories as one struggles to move on to a more promising future. The melody is constantly thrown back and forth between chimes and bells, imitating the oppressive influence of the past on the present. One of the motives that appears several times in the bells includes many fast, repeated notes accented by syncopation, attempting to rise higher but always inevitably descending down to the same pitch, as if trying to run away from something.

Written for and performed by the Westminster Concert Bell Choir.

Infinity's Reflection

The first track & single off of the debut EP, "Health"
Written by Kyle Gallagher
Performed by The Vernal Solstice (Kyle Gallagher, Megan Gallagher)
Recorded, Produced, Mixed, and Mastered by Matt Zeltmann

Breathe (Single)

I was thinking of (and feeling the need for) Thoreau's famous dictum, 'Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!', when I made this algorithmic meditation for sampled piano. It relates also to a class in Buddhist meditation I've been taking of late. 

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Infinity's Reflection

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