In the 1960’s, biologist John Buck traveled to Thailand with his wife Elisabeth to study the patterns and behaviors of native fireflies. Curious how the small insects could find each other to mate in such dense foliage, Buck captured fireflies from the banks of tidal rivers outside Bangkok and brought them back to his hotel room. When the light was turned off, the fireflies slowly started syncing the flashes of light from their abdomens. Within a half-hour, large groups of insects were blinking at the exact same time. They were looking at each other and altering their phase and the tempo of their flashes to match with the rest of the group! One firefly, flashing alone and out of sync in the middle of the rainforest is weak and ineffectual. But an orchestra of fireflies blinking in unison can light up and entire hillside. In S:nk, each musician is a firefly. This composition asks performers to create and synchronize a wide variety of sounds using only audio and visual clues from others onstage. And only when everyone is grooving in perfect synchronicity does the wild cacophony of beeps, bloops, ticks, and pops start to make musical sense.
