FRED SANDBACK
DR. JONATHAN C. HOEFS
OCTOBER 3, 2026
PARTICIPATORY LISTENING WORKSHOP
5–7 PM
OPENING RECEPTION
7–9 PM
PIECE FOR AEOLIAN HUMAN ORCHESTRA
7:30 PM
First Light is pleased to open with an inaugural presentation of Fred Sandback and Dr. Jonathan C. Hoefs, bringing together an edition by Sandback from 1969 and Piece for Aeolian Human Orchestra, a new contemporary music work by Hoefs composed for the space.
Sandback’s edition was originally produced for the catalogue accompanying 557,087, an exhibition organized by Lucy R. Lippard at the Seattle Art Museum Pavilion in 1969. Rather than a bound publication, the catalogue was issued as a set of individual index cards contributed by participating artists, containing proposals, documentation, and other information. Sandback’s card diagrams an Untitled rectangular floor piece in gray elastic cord, providing its material, dimensions, and spatial configuration.
Hoefs’ Piece for Aeolian Human Orchestra employs collective and participatory forms. A precisely developed set of instructions, performable by trained and untrained participants alike, provides a framework through which breath, sound, movement, and position unfold together. Rather than prescribing a fixed sequence of actions, these parameters shape attention and response while leaving each realization undetermined. The aeolian harp invoked in the title provides an analogue for this non-volitional structure: an instrument made audible by forces acting upon it rather than by the deliberate action of a player.
Both works locate themselves between proposition and occurrence. Sandback’s diagram specifies a tensioned line and the volume it delineates; Hoefs similarly works through an economy of means, establishing the basis from which the performance can emerge. In each, a concise structure produces an experience that exceeds its description, treating space not as an emptiness to be filled but as something already active, requiring only a line, a body, or a shift in attention to become perceptible.
Fred Sandback (1943–2003) was an American artist whose sculptures, drawings, and prints developed a radically reduced vocabulary of line and spatial division. Beginning in the late 1960s, Sandback used elastic cord, wire, and later acrylic yarn to establish volume and alter the perception of existing architecture with minimal physical means.
Dr. Jonathan C. Hoefs is a composer, artist, and educator working with sound, listening, participation, and embodied experience. He received his PhD in Music Composition from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he taught Sound, Listening, and Consciousness. Pauline Oliveros served on his dissertation committee, and her development of Deep Listening has informed Hoefs’ subsequent work with participatory approaches to listening and performance.