SERGIO MESSINA

Tic/aaa, parts 1 & 3 (1999) contribution to the MerzMuseum project, live internet radio for Kurt Schwitters. a Radio Lilliput production One of my very few forays into Noise, a genre that actually takes a lifetime to master. Here's the text I wrote for Tic/aaa in september 1999: "These two files are all I have been able to recover from a wreck I've experienced a few days ago (computers and disasters just seem to go well together, don't they). It is only two parts of four, and are presented in recorded form, not in a live stream as they should have been (I've lost some software as well, in the wreck - along with a whole partition of the HD), but they're "finished pieces". Perhaps I will resume working on this project later (at the moment I am loosing sleep on the launch of this site, which will take place on monday morning)." Tic/aaa fiddles again with a longtime interest of mine: technological accidents, or misunderstandings (qui pro quo) between machines (try reading any jpg with a text program to see exactly what I mean). Mac Os 7.5 gave a nice clue: upon not finding certain extensions, a note popped up, saying: "Sorry, I do not speak this dialect". Also the babel of standards never ceases to amaze me: I've spent some time listening to video vhs tapes on an 8 track audio tape recorder. Upon joining this project, I found four Ursonate 8 bit wav samples on the web, at: http://www.peak.org/~dadaist/English/TextOnly/ursonate.html I have decided to work with those alone. I have imagined that these were the only bits left of the Ursonate. Further: I imagined a space traveler from somewhere, reconstructing our culture, and all there was left of this piece were those samples. They obviously could not be decoded and played anymore (a vast and urgent theme, often dealt with by science and art). But this is a smart and stubborn alien, and finally now s/he (and us all) can hear Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate (which is now called Tic/aaa) "exactly as it was imagined by the author". This piece's overall sound was inspired by the noise works by GX Jupitter Larsen (and a few others); many thanks also go to Kunstradio, to everyone involved in the MerzMuseum project and to the 8 bit culture. To be played at maximum volume; for best results connect your computer to your stereo. Play Tic/aaa part 1 Play Tic/aaa part 2

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