1 Minute Compression
EDITION OF 500
COLLABORATION WITH NEW MUSEUM, NEW YORK
Tristan Perich is a prolific composer and visual artist whose elegant works rely on pared down electronic systems. His compositions explore the fundamental relationships between acoustic and digital sound. Loud Objects, his musical ensemble with Kunal Gupta and Katie Shima, produces dense, explosive noise through alternating arrangements of audio circuitry.
To make his recent work 1-Bit Symphony (2009), an exquisitely simple art object and an experimental album in one, Perich embedded a delicate electronic circuit within a transparent plastic CD case that included a headphone jack, allowing for the direct transmission of 50 minutes of lo-fi listening. Furthering this exploration of electricity and 1-bit circuitry, Compressions (2009-2010), created specially for the Mystery Multibox, is a miniature electronic music composition realized through the raw parts of a circuit board. Referencing the process of encoding information that is essential for any kind of audio or video transmission, Compressions, in Perich’s words, “reduces the music player to its minimal essentials: power, microprocessor, volume control and audio output. It replaces design with an austere statement of functionality that touches on both the practical and aesthetic aspects of compression.”
An electronic sound box, Compressions offers listeners a composition comprised of 1-bit pulses of electricity, available immediately upon opening, with no extra hardware required.
