Dream Prayer Observatory

A collaboration between a photographer, a composer, and an audio engineer

Dan Bailey’s Observatories series renders photographs with an expanded sense of time. It attempts to slow down to observe, reflect, and record landscapes – a rhythm that is more on a geologic time scale. The images presented in Dream Prayer Observatory are from one camera view on the southern coast of Tasmania taken over a period of 3 months.

Composer Linda Dusman began to study the Paganini Caprices in response to a request from violinist Airi Yoshioka for a new solo work. At the same time, the plight of children in the Mideast immigrating with their families drew her to listen to an Arabic lullaby, which used a similar mode to the 6th Paganini Caprice. The combination in Dream Prayer Lullaby ultimately became three-fold: a dream of a peaceful integration of peoples as they are forced from one land to another, a prayer that this dream might be realized, and a lullaby to comfort the children who suffer and wait.

Alan Wonneberger recorded and spatialized Airi Yoshioka’s performance Dream Prayer Lullaby as the audio component of Dream Prayer Observatory. Convolution reverb places the violin in the Great Pyramid, while the work slowly “migrates” in stereo space.

This 12-hour limited release of the piece serves as a fundraiser for the following non-profits devoted to improving the quality of life for children and the planet:

UNICEF for child refugees and migrants

Retriever Essentials – to support UMBC students in need

Kids Rights

Friends of the Earth