Constellation: Beta, 2026

Steven Yazzie and Michael Prepsky

Sound Collaborators: Alex Branch, Nathan Hall, Noel Waite

Ceramics, volcanic earth, and colored sand with sound 

Constellation: Beta is a floor installation that grounds the cosmic and the terrestrial, drawing on Diné and Greek cosmologies. Five ceramic vessels are arranged according to Cassiopeia and its Diné counterpart, Náhookos Bi’áadii (“Northern Female”).

During the collaborative performance, additional vessels are introduced to the arrangement as sound sculptures. Contact microphones, amplification, recording, and electronic manipulation reveal and transform their subtle vibrations, foregrounding how scale, form, surface, and firing shape each vessel’s resonant qualities. Through collaborative performance, the ceramic forms become active participants, creating shifting relationships among performers, objects, space, and audience.

The work approaches celestial orientation as a score, notation and generative structure rather than an image or symbol. Náhookos Bi’áadii offers a point of departure for considering how celestial relationships might organize physical space, movement, and material. This also translates a constellation not into a picture of the night sky, but into an arrangement of objects, bodies, sound, and movement.