A Truly Magical Moment
Two i-phones face each other on angled selfie sticks (a stick designed to promote a narcissistic gaze). A familiar dial-up tone plays and the Apple Video Chat Platform Face Time kicks in. A human face appears on one screen. Another dial tone ; another face. This mutual gaze occurs across an unfathomable and intimate distance, now a performance space. A truly magical Moment by Adam Basanta creates an absurd yet oddly familiar situation using familiar and aesthetically beautiful telecommunication tools. The work completes a few dizzying optical circuits. We witness the gaze. It is a recursive performance of seeing and being seen. It is a personal moment, a shared moment; voyeurism, exhibitionism, many times over.
Credits
Adam Basanta
A Truly Magical Moment
2016
2 cell phones, 2 cell phone sticks, electronics, speaker, rotating motor
Biography
Adam Basanta (b. 1985) is a Montreal-based sound artist, composer, and performer of experimental music. His work traverses sound installations, experimental electronic and chamber music composition, site-specific interventions, and laptop performance. Across disciplines and media, he interrogates intersections between conceptual and sensorial dimensions of listening, the materiality of technological apparatus, and the instabilities of instrumentality.
His 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), and 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).
Adam 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).