MASS FOR THE ENDANGERED
SARAH KIRKLAND SNIDER
“A poetic, layered, phantasmagorical story.” – Nonesuch Records
“Kyrie”
“Gloria”
“Alleluia”
“Sanctus”
“Credo”
“Agnus Dei”
Mass For the Endangered is a six-part visual “Cathedral of the Cosmos” created with composer Sarah Kirkland Snider and writer Nathaniel Bellows. Drawing from sacred geometry, manuscript illumination, ecological symbolism, and early animation devices, the project constructs a visual liturgy for endangered life on Earth.
Originally commissioned by Trinity Church Wall Street, the recording features the English vocal ensemble Gallicantus conducted by Gabriel Crouch. NPR says: "Through her smart and resplendent exploration of age-old musical forms, Snider's eco-inspired Mass for the Endangered is a blast from the past that resonates profoundly in the present."
For the visual album and subsequent live performances, I presented a unified and distinctive vision to accompany the music of Mass: the full six videos are viewed as a ‘Cathedral of the Cosmos,’ honoring and receiving the animal and plant species that no longer find life on Earth sustainable. The videos draw from architectural elements of cathedrals and grow in dimension and complexity with each video.
Read more about our collaboration at Nonesuch.com. The entire visual album is on permanent display at The Streaming Museum.
Production Credits
Creative Direction + Visual Design:
Deborah Johnson
Unity + TouchDesigner Programming:
Louise Léssel
Produced by:
Sarah Kirkland Snider
Nonesuch Records
Mass for the Endangered in Process
Building a Visual Cosmology
Mass for the Endangered evolved as a six-part visual album developed in collaboration with composer Sarah Kirkland Snider and writer Nathaniel Bellows. The project drew from manuscript illumination, sacred geometry, ecological symbolism, cathedral architecture, astronomical diagrams, and early animation devices to construct a symbolic universe for endangered life on Earth.
A Living Cathedral of the Cosmos
The final visual album combined digital compositing, motion design, collage, practical textures, archival influences, and iterative visual development. Rather than illustrating individual songs, the films function as interconnected chapters within a larger symbolic ecosystem—part ecological elegy, part cosmic liturgy, and part speculative mythology.
Created between 2020–2022, the project predates the visual language now commonly associated with contemporary generative-AI imagery. The imagery was developed through a combination of practical experimentation, digital compositing, animation, and handcrafted visual systems.
Storyboarding a Visual Album
Each chapter was developed through extensive storyboards, sequence maps, visual studies, and chapter planning. Recurring motifs—including orbital systems, endangered flora and fauna, stained-glass structures, celestial cartography, and evolving geometric organisms—were designed to reappear across the six films, creating a shared visual mythology that unfolded over the album's full duration.
Material Experiments + Image Generation
Many of the project's textures, organisms, and cosmological environments emerged from hands-on experimentation with pigments, fluids, macro photography, and practical image-making techniques. These studies generated visual behaviors and organic forms that became building blocks throughout the album.
