This performance of Mask/Mirror by Alessandro Bosetti was recorded at the 2009 Deep Wireless Radio and Transmission Art festival at the Wychwood Theatre in Toronto.
A few months before the performance Bosetti wrote a note to himself: "Try to create a mask that that doesn't have anything to do with anything. He kept wondering what that could mean until he started to imagine Mask/Mirror.
Mask/Mirror is a sampler that processes recordings of spoken language in real time. It uses samples of Bosetti's voice creating the ambiguous situation of being interrupted by himself all the time and of having to resort to all possible resources to keep making sense. The sampler follows both sound and meaning criteria in sorting, organizing and processing samples and formulating utterances. It randomly manages sample banks of words making it possible to determine the syntactic form of a phrase (for example noun - verb - noun) but not the actual words the phrase it's made of. Mask/Mirror is a software tool based on Max/Msp that interacts with Bosetti's spoken voice during performances. It also explores the sounding character of the voice/speech material through sound processing and pitch tracking.
Alessandro Bosetti is a composer and sound artist. He works on the musicality of spoken words and unusual aspects of spoken communication and produced text-sound compositions featured in live performances, radio broadcastings and published recordings. In his work he moves on the line between sound anthropology and composition often including translation and misunderstanding in the creative process. Field research and interviews often build the basis for his abstract compositions along with electroacoustic and acoustic collages, relational strategies,trained and untrained instrumental practices, vocal explorations and digital manipulations. Since he's curious about differences he travels. Just in 2006 he's been living and working in West Africa, China, Taiwan, Holland, Scandinavia, United States , Germany and Italy.
The Deep Wireless 15 Online Album was produced by New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) for the 2021 edition of the annual Deep Wireless Festival of Radio & Transmission Art. The album celebrates the 20th Anniversary of both New Adventures in Sound Art and Deep Wireless and is comprised of past performances produced for the festival by New Adventures in Sound Art.
Editions 9 through 14 of the Deep Wireless Compilation are available on NAISA's Soundcloud site. Previous compact disc editions can be heard online at naisa.ca/media-archive/compactdiscs/
Copyright of the works belongs to the artists who have agreed to have their work on NAISA's Soundcloud page.
Note that Deep Wireless 15 is not available for download. Community and public radio or internet broadcasters should contact NAISA directly for access to the works for airplay. Contact naisa@naisa.ca for more information.
Artistic Director: Darren Copeland
Executive Director: Nadene Thériault-Copeland
Image Illustration: Prashant Miranda
