When thinking about liminal concepts, we often consider phases of sociocultural, economic, environmental, and personal transition. But if we pervert this method of observation, we can explore the cybernetic system in which those phases mark one of many possible outputs or results. Using this as a frame of reference, we can identify the most symmetrical, taintless, and insecure location: >now>. When we take >now> and transform it into by acknowledging the overarching cybernetic structure of observation itself, we gain the possibility to reduce the scale of the sphere to its , and are left with a location in ~time~, a one-dimensional >paradise< with its content flipped inside out.
“~NOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW~” is an experimental sonic arrangement that uses several applications to feed and support one another in generating a constant audio stream. A 5 second long recording of the word “now,” taken from Celine Dion’s 1996 hit “It's All Coming Back To Me Now,” forms the core of this sonic arrangement. A counter constantly calculates the exact span between the start time and the end time (1 year later) and translates it to a floating point number between 0 and 1. In the course of 365 days this counter moves a digital playhead through this 5 second long sample at a resolution of 60hz+ and stretches the sample to roughly 31556952 seconds (1 year). This magnifies the sound, creating incredibly slow oscillating harmonics. With each instance of the usage of #NOW on Twitter, the system opens a short window in |time| for the noise of the CPU and other hardware components to be picked up and passed on to the feedback system, changing the overall behaviour and sound in an unforeseen, but self-stabilising way.
Commissioned as part of the CTM Radio Lab, led by CTM Festival and Deutschlandfunk Kultur – Radio Art / Klangkunst in collaboration with Goethe-Institut, ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, Ö1 Kunstradio, and The Wire magazine.