Adam Basanta designed and constructed three new pieces investigating the relationships between consumer objects, movement, space, sound, and perception. He is using devices you often carry with you in your pocket. Objects you can buy in a store, without which you rarely leave the house: a pair of white ear buds, an iPhone, a pair of foam earplugs. These technologies become part of daily life. We are attached to them. If you dont have them on reach we feel stressed, even threatened.
These objects emit, amplify, transmit, or block sound, objects which enable and disable potentials for communications and changes of perception. Three topological devices which can create, divide, or connect disparate spaces: whether real or virtual, acoustic or electronic, sonic or visual.
The intention of these objects is twisted and recombined, their original function transformed through inversion. A roundabout use, a reversal of normal order. Turning inside out and outside in. Inversion teases out new perspectives, new emphasis, a new meter, renewed meaning. What sort of resulting spaces are created, divided, reconnected? How are sound and listening situated in their midst?
Basanta asks how does this technologicaly-shaped space manifest if turned inside out, outside in. How does a physical sculpture, constructed from little devices designed to internalize sound, moderate our aural perception? How do devices transfer us to the realm of the personal, separate from the world outside? And the aural apparatus of our body, this enigmatic space inside our skull, what is the soundscape of our mind?
Adam Basanta (b. 1985) is a Canadian sound artist, composer, and performer of experimental music. His work includes sound installations, electroacoustic and instrumental composition, site specific interventions, and laptop performances. He investigates perception – and listening in particular – as an active, participatory, multimodal activity which is distributed throughout a variety of human and nonhuman agencies. Adam Basanta’s sound and audiovisual installations have been presented in North America and Europe in galleries and institutions including Carroll/Fletcher Gallery (London), Serralves Museum (POR), Edith-Russ-Haus fur Mediakunst (GER), Vitra Design Museum (GER), Laboral (ESP), Gallery B-312 (Montreal), Fonderie Darling (Montreal), Titanik Gallery (FIN), and The Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe (USA). His worsk have been awarded in the Prix Ars Electronica 2013 and the 2014 Edith-Russ-Haus Awards for Emerging Media Artists. His experimental concert music has been presented worldwide, including appearances in the MATA Festival (NY), Gaudeamus Musicweek (NL), CTM Festival (GER), Akousma Festival (CAN), and Mutek Festival (CAN), and have been awarded multiple national and international prizes, including Metamorphoses 2010 (Belgium) and the Grand Prize in the SOCAN Foundation Awards for Young Composers (Canada). Recently, his music has been released on Kohlenstoff Records (Montreal), Cassauna (USA), and Farmacia901 (Italy).
Basanta holds a BFA in composition from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC) and an interdisciplinary MA in composition and sound art installation at Concordia University (Montreal, QC).
Adam Basanta's residency takes place in cooperation with the Agosto Foundation.
