emblem is a 5.1 public music installation commissioned for the Winter Olympic games in Torino, Italy and installed in the main square of Salice d’Ulzio where the skiing events took place. The work is a sonic map of the quintessential Olympic symbol of five interlocking rings. The five rings represent the continental regions defined by the Olympic Charter (Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania). I have translated this idea into sonic terms by assigning each of the five main speakers to a geographic region, and creating a spatial sonic collage that utilizes short samples from the vast collection of world music in the archives of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings — everything from Japanese shakuhachi to West African kora to Norwegian hardangerfele. One can focus on the sounds from a particular continent, the sonic dialogue between two continents (i.e. Asia and North America), or the aggregate sounding of the world in competition. In this work I was particularly interested in unexpected correspondences between complexly diverse nations and cultures.