“To light a candle is to cast a shadow.”
ursula k. le guin
Pillars of Omales
Pillars of Omales is an immersive sound installation built around tension as both material and condition. Three century-old architectural columns stand in a triangular formation, bound together by hundreds of tightly pulled threads. There is no center and no stage. The space is held in suspension.
The work takes its name from Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, a story about the moral cost of collective harmony. Like Le Guin’s walkers, the installation offers no resolution.
The Music
Magnetic transducers embedded inside each column turn the structure itself into a resonant body. Vibrations travel through the pillars and into the web of threads, transforming the entire installation into a distributed speaker system.
An original composition for strings and oud activates the space. The threads vibrate with the music, creating a tactile acoustic environment where sound is carried by material rather than projected outward. Language dissolves into resonance. The structure listens back.
The installation was constructed from three salvaged 100-year-old columns, sealed for safety and mounted on minimally processed raw wood logs. Hundreds of threads were individually pulled and tied between the pillars in randomized patterns. Small tinsels cut from keffiah and tallit fabrics are suspended within the web, stripped of fixed symbolism and reduced to texture and shimmer.
Rather than narrating conflict or offering reconciliation, Pillars of Omales holds tension as a lived condition, particularly within shared and contested space. The work does not speak louder than its materials. It resonates.