Hojas de Maíz was made at the request of Cincinnati composer and instrument-builder Anthony Luensman. The film was originally envisioned to be part of Tony's installation, Irato, in which each of his twenty-plus pieces, on exhibit in a civic art center, responded to viewers' pressing of a button. An exhibit of doorbells, imaginatively defined. One of Tony's stocks-in-trade is the use of discarded upright piano innards as electrified harps; my film contribution was to be projected amidst arrays of vibrating piano strings as art patrons took an elevator from the ground floor to a performing arts center. While this eventually proved infeasible due to ambient light conditions in the building, it did inspire the look and basic vocabulary of the film.
