Jeanette Andrews was riding the train back from the Lower East Side when, suddenly, it all clicked.

Someone was playing violin in the subway that night as she made her way home from a performance art exhibition and wondered: could Morse code be used to create a musical notation system? Thus began a year and a half long process of developing “In Plain Listen,” a new piece commissioned by Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts which explores secrets that are hidden in plain sight, or in this case, plain listen.

Andrews has long been fascinated with hidden, secret messages—she is a professional illusionist, after all. Following a magic performance presented to her preschool class at the age of four, she began performing professionally at age six and never stopped. With over 27 years of specialized study and technical training, Andrews is a multi-disciplinary artist, magician, and researcher who combines historic anecdotes, scientific curiosities, and sensory anomalies to provoke moments of awe and amazement. She works closely with museums and galleries, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and The Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt, to re-contextualize magic within the cultural arts.

“I consider magic my medium of choice,” she explains, “and it just happens to also be an extremely technical vocation as well. I’m interested in using performances grounded in the seemingly impossible, surprise, and wonder, as live thought experiments to explore larger questions about how we perceive the world around us.” Though Andrews does not explicitly explore gender in her work, she notes that female magicians are incredibly rare and women working full-time in the profession constitute approximately less than one percent of the overall field.

After creating a musical notation system based on the beeping sequences in Morse code, Andrews used this system to translate one of the first magic effects in written history into a score for solo cello. While a cellist plays the score, Andrews performs the magic effect in tandem with the music, amidst an installation of sheer curtains imprinted with a redacted version of the original sixteenth century text. Both concealing and revealing, the result is a multi-sensory experience intentionally curated to engage and captivate.

“In Plain Listen” will debut March 9 at The University of Houston in the Allen Media Center, located within the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture. Designed by Doug Michaels, co-founder of the avant-garde art group Ant Farm and former lecturer at the University of Houston, the Allen Media Center was originally known as the Teleport media room, constructed in 1979 for the home of Houstonians Rudge and Nancy Allen. The room, which housed the first Apple personal computer purchased in Texas, was gifted to the university by Nancy, and installed in its current location in 1998.

“Given that the basis for [‘In Plain Listen’] has roots in the late 16th century, as does the history of the modern cello, bringing in a 1980s aesthetic creates an interesting juxtaposition,” Andrews says. “I’m so excited to perform in the space . . . especially as it invokes thought about how information and knowledge is shared and in what contexts we are most receptive to receive it, as well as who has access to start with.”