Live remixes of audio of WNYC’s radio reports of the 9/11 attacks.
Recorded via the SoundCloud app for iPhone during performance at Open Studio Days at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI
2013

For Open Studio Days 2013, I created an installation where I performed live remixes of the WNYC eyewitness account radio reports recorded during the 9/11 attacks.

The installation consisted of a small looping video of a man running through a park with his arms outstretched like a plane. Behind where I sat manipulating the audio was a 36″x108″ black and white photograph of a 2002 performance piece I was involved in, protesting the treatment of Americans and foreigners under the Patriot Act at the time.

For the live remix, the WNYC broadcast recordings from 9/11 were run off my iPad directly into Boss DD6 and DD7 delay pedals, which I used to grab small samples of sound to loop and layer. I also ran the audio through an Alesis Metavox vocoder to degrade and add musicality to additional samples. I plugged my Kaossilator synthesizer into an Octave pedal to give it some depth and grit and made low musical accompaniment to the samples that I was processing live.

9/11 didn’t become real to me until I heard the narratives being broadcast on NPR the day it happened, so working with the sound was very important to me. I like working with analog looping technology because it is so similar to our minds, the way a certain phrase will get stuck in my memory and replay and degrade into noise over time that is still painful to hear even though the specific meaning has been lost.

This elements of this installation/performance served as a jumping off point for conversations about how this country has never processed 9/11 culturally, resulting in a lost decade in this country. I discussed with people my concerns about censorship and war surrounding this particular event and people shared memories, thoughts and ideas about the event, the past decade and current politics in this country.