Inside every speaker you’ve ever seen is a cone that does one very simple thing: it moves up and it moves down. As it does, that cone bumps into air, which bumps into more air, which bumps into more and more air and then bounces off walls and floors and objects and bodies and eventually, if you’re close enough, bumps right into your ear drum.  

At the heart of Shiver Lung 2 are two subwoofer speaker cones doing their thing: moving up and moving down. But here, for the bulk of the piece, the subs are moving so slowly we can’t actually hear the sound they make. Performers slide their palms and fingernails and chains and pieces of paper and rattles and chimes across the surfaces of these subs while they shake, drawing them into the realm of audibility through touch.

Shiver Lung 2 was composed for Ross Karre and premiered at Issue Project Room in New York, New York on September 29, 2017.