Doug Harbin

Piano and Fixed Media Audio & Video

Composer's Note:

Cygnus was originally commissioned as a fixed media video by the Spirit Room of Fargo as part of a 2023 Big Read Grant by the National Endowment of the Arts. It is inspired by Andrew Krivak’s novel The Bear, which is about a father and a daughter who are the last two humans on the planet. Cygnus depicts the feelings of isolation and insignificance the characters may have felt as they gazed into the night sky.

The video for Cygnus includes twelve time-lapse scenes from around the shot by Michael Abramyan. All electronic sounds for Cygnus come from NASA’s website and were manipulated by the composer using Logic Pro X. In 2024, Jennifer Waleczek commissioned the addition of a piano part, which is inspired by Alexander Scriabin’s mystic chord.