A few months ago I wrote a note to myself:
"Try to create a mask that that doesn’t have anything to do with anything." and kept wondering what that could mean until i started to imagine Mask/Mirror.
Mask/Mirror a sampler to process recordings of spoken language in real time.
The sampler follows both sound and meaning criteria in sorting, organizing and processing samples and in formulating utterances.
It is a software tool based on max/msp and a speech recognition software interacting with my own voice during performances. It’s also a state of mind enabling expanded spoken and vocal improvisation, expanded communication and ecstasy.
It has been developed in collaboration with Harvestworks Digital Arts Center in New York and STEIM in Amsterdam.
Mask/Mirror has to do with virtually everything but at the same time it does not have anything special to do with anything special.
As well as being a blank mask I can put on my face - and my voice - it’s also a mirror that let me browse and talk to my memory while I am watching into it.
All mirrors are masks and vice versa. Both are tools enabling identity.
"It is difficult not to treat Mask Mirror, with its randomized garble of words, as a willfully cryptic Oracle of Delphi reincarnated as an Apple laptop. While Bosetti had described the project as "about the aboutness of being about" what Noise got out all of this is that it’s devilishly hard not to seek meaning even where it’s clear none is forthcoming. Not until the program, in a moment of absurd hilarity, spit forth the word "hamburgers" did it all click: Mask Mirror is a tool for shearing all meaning from language. It’s a liberation, of sorts, like the sound version of Rorschach tests: The mind is encouraged to wander freely and delight in words purely for their sound. In the information overload of contemporary times, Mask Mirror’s playful rupturing of sense--its nonsense, in other words--is a welcome respite." Raven Baker - Noise/Citypaper
"Bosetti’s work has undjudgemental embrace, complex transvaluations and challenges our liberalism." - The Wire
"Once in a while, after listening to a new cd, I find myself exclaiming: ’this one is really absolutely fantastic! Everything is on its place here!’ This happened to me while listening to Bosetti’s new cd." - Vital Weekly
"The seven works on "Her Name" are some of the most accessible sound art pieces around. The music is evocative, wide-ranging and open-minded." - Bobby Tanzilo, On Milwaukee.
"Listening to this album can be compared to two scenarios being inside of a mental asylum, full of unidentified people with strange stories to tell or watching a documentary about nomads. Either way, you’re stuck motionless, waiting with baited breath for the next event to occur, until the story finally unravels itself ... Love the record to death" - Tom Sekowski GAZ-ETA
"The final word "I" clearly summing up the intricacies and complexities of this unusual, ultimately very rewarding recording." - Brian Olewnick Bagatellen
"Her Name" is a record founded on meetings and voices. Having toured extensively throughout Europe, China, Japan, and the U.S., Bosetti’s performances consisted of some of the music you’ll hear within. During the performances he sat, with a computer sitting on a table next to him, his voice at the aural focus, coming from his mouth in the middle of his face, he translated the recorded voices of the people he’s met along the way. Those voices appear in this recording. However, many more things also appear: guitar, piano, harmonium, double bass, trumpet, electronics, cello and field recordings combine in small ensembles and reconstructed jazz groups to create songs (yes, really!) that take the listener on an amazing trip around this world and others. Recorded in Amsterdam, Sangha, Berlin, Milano, and Baltimore and featuring a full cast of guest musicians and vocalists such as Ernst Karel, Koen Nutters, Morten J. Olsen, Ana Djangouno Dolo, Ibe, Adachi Tomomi, Mariangela Tinelli, Paul Glazer, Ayako Fukunaga, Chico Mello, Fernanda Farah and Die Maulwerker, "Her Name" is a powerful record about the collective voice, cohesively honed into an amazing listening experience that speaks to everyone. Beautiful recordings craftfully mixed by Alessandro Bosetti and Giuseppe Ielasi and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
"Her Name" is released in an edition of 500, packaged in an oversized die cut wallet and designed by Jim Schoenecker.
