TRANSMISSION ART ARCHIVE
Radio deComposition
2004
Damian Catera
deComposition is a process of sonic attrition where sounds are sampled and broken down. New sounds emerge from the destruction, which is chaotic and probabilistic.
The airwaves of the NYC metro area serve as the sonic palette in these improvised pieces for three radios and real-time processing. For this group of deCompositions, live radio is sampled and altered on the fly, with randomization algorithms, which I wrote in the MAX/MSP programming environment.
This is a process that forces me to embrace unpredictability, as I'm usually dealing with source material that varies widely in quality and content. The ephemerality of it all is a strangely unifying and comforting factor. Happy conceptual accidents sometimes occur, and they occasionally seem to involve right wing paranoia... the desperate gasps of fear in the failing and deComposing experiment known as America.