“There’s no heaven nor life after death for obsolete computers, that’s a fairy tale for people afraid of darkness” Stephen Hawking
At the dawn of the third millennium, media technology was seen as having a significant aesthetic and poetic dimension. Each innovation seemed like real leaps forward, and artists were fascinated by the possibilities that these technologies offered to project different views on reality.
The cyberspace was seen as a separate dimension from the physical world we lived in, and the aesthetic of the machine pervaded many fields of human creativity. However, today the internet and media technology -such as Ai- are much more embedded in our daily life, and that epic dimension of cyberspace seems to have dissolved into it. Media technology doesn’t seem as mysterious as it used to be, but instead it has become a reflection of the world we already know.
Nevertheless, far from being circumscribed to streaming or digital formats, today’s listening practices, show a renewed interest in outdated physical formats and listening devices. This form of technostalgia is more than longing for an ideal past. These formats and devices function like time machines that connect the past with the present, and even project the future.
PROGRAM
Fernando Manassero (IT/CH) *
String drive (2023)
for string quartet, floopy disk drive quartet and electronics
Alessandro Ratoci (IT/CH)
Hardcore (2023)
string quartet and electronics
Quarteto Maurice
Violin - Georgia Privitera Violin - Laura Bertolino Viola - Francesco Vernero Violoncello - Aline Privitera
Electronics and sound - Fernando Manassero, Alessandro Ratoci
RANDOM FUTURE MEMORIES imagined by Quartetto Maurice, Fernando Manassero and Alessandro Ratoci consists of three images that reflect on the subjects of collective memory and technology. The pieces of this program -two of them specially written for the quartet- propose different dialogs between the string quartet, physical devices and listening practices from other
String drive by Fernando Manassero, informed by the concept of technostalgia, reflects on memory practices and the modern relation with outdated and current technology. By turning a group of floppy disk drives into musical devices that play along with the string quartet, these obsolete devices become different entities, with their own voices.
Hardcore by Alessandro Ratoci is an attempt to blend the elements of music with those of the more extreme radical dance genres, such as new music and IDM -electronic dance music-. A piece where the clichés of each of them can interact creating a rich expression, signs of the complexity of the nowadays musical stylistic hybridisation. Another way to address memory through music and technology.
