Capturing the zeitgeist of confinement and tedium quarantine, Stephen transposes his musical compositions onto a programmable music box mechanism. manually marking out and punching out the notes onto the card that activates the music box mechanism – each note, each rhythm constrained within the lines.
Music Boxed transforms the invisible realities of isolation into a tangible, audible form. At its core is a mechanical music box — a device both archaic and intimate — into which original compositions are translated by hand: each note punched onto paper, each melody mapped into coded sequences. This physical transposition mirrors the temporal experience of quarantine, where time alters shape and attention collapses into loops of repetition and introspection. The mechanical ticking of the music box becomes a metaphor for confinement itself: temporal compression, ritualized repetition, and the yearning for resonance beyond one’s self-imposed boundaries.
