Resonant Matter by jenn howd

When I was a kid in elementary school, my music teacher (Mrs. Eggleston) once played us a record and asked us to write a story about the pictures it put in our minds. I don’t remember the name of the track, but I do remember the story I made up. It was about a witch who lived on top of a mountain. From the music alone, a portal opened up a whole world in an imaginal realm. I can still picture the scene in my mind to this day.

Since childhood, I’ve wandered in and out of imaginative realms through portals of sound—sometimes deliberately, sometimes by accident. Ancient poets and musicians practiced an openness that allowed creation to move through them, rather than from them. In the same spirit, that’s what I set out to do with these pieces: to follow impulses not born of logic, but guided by something greater.

On March 28, 2025, I began working on this project with a small intention-setting ceremony inviting the Greek Goddesses and Muses to guide me. While resting on my yoga mat contemplating how to begin, I reached for one of a few nearby books. On this day, I picked up my dad’s old pocket dictionary, an item of his I've cherished since his passing.

As I picked up the book, a page fell open. The first word my eyes landed on was "lyre."

I chuckled to myself.

Minutes later, I opened a random page within another nearby book entitled, "Free Play Improvisation in Life and Art." I looked down to see I had opened to page with the chapter heading, “The Muse.”

I literally gasped out loud. I couldn't quite wrap my head around the very clear messages I had just received. But I knew I shouldn't try and "understand" them—that it was my job to simply be grateful and continue to be open to seeing them.

And they continued...

One afternoon, while painting a cassette tape gold for the physical "Athena" installation, I smudged some paint on the tape's ribbon by accident. The internet told me to use rubbing alcohol to remove the paint. And I remembered I had tucked some old packets of rubbing alcohol somewhere in a drawer in my studio that I'd never used. When I finally found them, I chuckled, once again.

The brand of alcohol wipes was named, "Zeus." Athena’s father.

Another day, I was struggling to locate my old sticker collection as I was digging through mountains of old boxes in our basement. I wanted to feature a few of my old stickers in the physical installation for the "Unidentified Muse" piece.

Growing increasingly more frustrated, I eventually stopped my frantic search and just asked out loud for help. Within seconds, my eyes fell upon a single sticker in a clear box right in front of me that I hadn’t noticed prior. The collection wasn’t in the box—but that one sticker gave me a clue as to where I soon ended up finding it.

There were more tender encounters, too. As I was working on the "Unidentified Muse" piece, I layered in the sounds of a little girl’s laugh as she was splashing in a body of water. At the end of the sample's clip, you could hear her say the word, “daddy.”

My memory immediately flashed to a scene of playing with my father as a small child by a lake that we visited often. I felt my father’s presence. Tears flowed. And despite a looming rational voice within me telling me to keep the track strictly nonverbal, I chose to keep the word in the piece.

That same rational voice weeks later grew increasingly more concerned as I was nearing the end of composing the track. I was concerned the piece sounded too nostalgic, too heavy. When I thought of Muses, I thought of inspiration and brightness. This seemed at odds with where the piece was landing.

I decided to dig into some research on the Muses to get a better sense of how I might be able to justify the nostalgic tone. And that's when I discovered the Muses' mom is Mnemosyne, the goddess of Memory.

Another chuckle. This one accompanied by a warmth radiating in my chest. I never would have consciously chosen this direction, but it made perfect "sense."

This is the heart of Resonant Matter.

Let the sounds be YOUR guide.

Step into the imaginal realm.

Visit with the Goddesses.

Listen for the Muses.

Feel the presence of memory, of grief, of healing, of laughter.

And see where the journey takes you.

______

ABOUT THE INSTALLATION:

Resonant Matter is a physical site-specific sound installation in Cincinnati, Ohio that explores the sonic life of sculpture, myth, and material decay. Centered on three sculpted figures from Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park’s collection—Persephone, Athena, and an unidentified Muse—the installation transforms these ancient artifacts into immersive soundscapes that reflect their enduring presence, mythic resonance, and inevitable physical erosion. Installed inside Pyramid Hill’s iconic Pyramid House, Resonant Matter invites visitors to engage with these figures not just as visual objects, but as resonant bodies within which myth, material, and time converge.

Soundscapes play on continuous loops through analog tape players placed beside each figure. As the tapes and players gradually lose fidelity over time, they introduce distortions—added noise, reduced clarity, and altered tones—all of which mirror the slow erosion of the artifacts themselves.

Resonant Matter invites a quiet contemplation of impermanence, not as an end, but as a continual dance between endurance and dissolution. Whether fleeting like sound or seemingly fixed like form, all things remain in motion—shifting, transforming.

In this gentle unfolding, I invite you to reflect on, and connect with, the sacred continuity of change itself.

Artist//////////
///////Meditator
Benevolent/////// ////////////Disruptor
❤️🎧❤️ Scrambling minds and healing hearts with field samples and other sonic sundries.

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