“Cory Cullinan has once again captured the imagination and creativity many of us feel but are unable to express.”
— Victoria Polsely in Earmark
“I will listen again many times, no doubt. It is both beautiful and disturbing to watch.”
— Jessica M. from California
Footprint was originally conceived by Cory Cullinan as an undergrad at Stanford University in the late 1980s taking famed composer and electronic music legend John Chowning’s 220A course. He started working on it only to find it was too time-consuming for his undergraduate courseload — at the time, digital audio workstations didn’t exist, and creating all the field recordings and somehow putting them together in a multitrack mix would’ve taken months or years of work. So he never finished it. But he always wanted to.
Fast forward to the mid-2020s. Cory received word that Dr. Chowning, his Stanford Music Major Advisor and the creator of the FM synthesis that powers the DX7 keyboard and more on almost every 80s and 90s pop recording, was coming at age 89 to a concert Cory was playing with Riley Max in San Jose, CA. Cory immediately thought: ‘I have to finish the piece I never finished in Chowning’s class.’ Assisted by Cory’s own former college Recording Arts student Elizabeth Anaya — who’s now Cory’s Business & Studio Manager — Cory and Elizabeth worked at his Reach Studios to finish the piece before the show. It sounds remarkably similar to what he heard in his head in 1989.
Footprint now exists in three formats: as an audio piece, as a live audience interaction piece, and as a multimedia piece that’s a collaboration with Cory’s daughter Sidney Cullinan. As an audio piece, it was premiered to Cory’s Recording Arts students at Stanford in the summer of 2024. When surveyed as to what the piece was about and its message, the students fell into three distinct groups with different but strongly specific answers. This is exactly what the composer had hoped — an immersive emotional journey, yet one open to intellectual interpretation based on your own experience.
Playing on this interactive and contemplative nature, the piece was premiered live in San Jose, CA in the summer of 2024, with Dr. Chowning in attendance. Cory dedicated it to him and said he’d always wanted to finish it in Chowning’s class. At the end of the piece, his former professor shouted cheekily from the crowd: “Cory, you did it!” Among other things, the interactive version of the piece allows audiences to experience the observation that we shape our own environment.
For the multimedia version of Footprint, Cory’s daughter Sidney Cullinan was given free rein to write, edit and create a short film set to the audio she was given of it. Sidney has directed music videos featuring Grammy winners and more, produced environmental documentaries as both composer and editor, designed social media for the US Green Chamber Of Commerce, created campaigns and social media content securing the greatest engagement in the history of the world’s largest environmental non-profit (The Nature Conservancy), and is double-majoring and writing her Honors Thesis in Environmental Studies and Communications at UC Santa Barbara, the birthplace of the American environmental movement.
Composer Cory Cullinan is hosting and introducing his mentor John Chowning for a series of lecture/performances of the legendary composer’s work at University of Colorado Denver (where Cullinan earned his Masters in Recording Arts and was a professor) and Pikes Peak State College (where several of his wonderful summer Stanford Recording Arts students attend) in Colorado in February 2025. We welcome you to share with us your thoughts, observations and interpretations of Footprint via email or in the YouTube comments.
Composer, Mixer & Audio Narrative: Cory Cullinan
Director, Editor & Visual Narrative: Sidney Cullinan
Audio Engineer: Elizabeth Anaya
Produced by Cory Cullinan, Sidney Cullinan & Elizabeth Anaya
Inspired by John Chowning’s 220 Course Series @ Stanford University
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