American Cypher is a suite of projects that respond to American stories about race and DNA. The first module of this project was a sound installation commissioned by Bucknell University, inspired by Thomas Jefferson (the 3rd US president) and Sally Hemings (his slave and, as DNA tests confirm, mother to his children). The piece that we’ve made for the Download series is a performance score. The image in the video was recorded in the basement of Jefferson’s plantation, Monticello, in Charlottesville, Virginia.