Thursday, May 25th, Antenes opens her 2017 residency with new work incorporating research on the unique audio terrain of early, analog telephone pioneers and hackers. The performance features found field recordings threaded into the electro-acoustic qualities and electronic signals from her handmade switchboard synths, made from repurposed, vintage/obsolete equipment.
Antenes’ sound-world is sourced from notably extinct sounds, from the long-defunct analog telephone networks that once prevailed in connecting voices throughout the planet. Highlighting processed field recordings from the 1960’s and 1970’s, Antenes establishes an “audio museum” in sonic conversation with her own modular synthesizers housed inside vintage telecom equipment. The performance integrates segments of these recordings that decode the subtleties heard in the silent wait-times between calls, where audio explorers would “hold” calls long after the operator or called party hung up. These moments of “silence” were held to record the errant, ghost-like frequencies of unused long distance lines. Here, frequencies would drift into oscillation, revealing pulses and voices crossing over from nearby wires and other sonic anomalies perceivable only in the spaces between calls, granting the listeners / curious audio explorers nuanced access to a vast network of communications, at the fuzzy boundary of perception.
Antenes’ performance also highlights the mechanical qualities of vintage telephone switching equipment by applying contact microphones and small binaural microphones to the surface of the equipment -- pulling new sounds out of antiquated devices. Influenced by a recent visit to an anechoic chamber with a calculagraph in tow, Antenes amplifies, processes and spatializes the “tiny” sounds of operator time-keeping devices.
After the performance, Antenes invites the audience to engage with and inquire about her homemade instruments and controllers.
New York-based musician, synth builder and electronics artist Antenes operates a laboratory of self-made sequencers and synthesizers using repurposed vintage telephone equipment. Known for her inventive soundscapes, Antenes treats the studio as a space for sculpting emergent patterns, textures, and percussion layers. Drawing musical influence from the curious and ephemeral sound-world of outdated telephone systems, her productions integrate sounds reminiscent of pulsing analog relay switching systems, errant radio transmissions, cross-continental echo, signature drones and message interferences between wires.
Antenes has held residencies at Harvestworks (NYC) and Signal Culture (Owego NY) and has appeared at numerous interdisciplinary events including the New York Electronic Arts Festival, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory’s “Intersections” exhibition (Batavia, IL), Open House London’s Sonic Visitations, and Trinity College’s Science Gallery (Dublin). Her work is featured in the 2013 documentary I Dream of Wires: The Modular Synthesizer Documentary, as well as in several master’s theses including Mills College, FIT and Clemson University. Her 2015 production debut, The Track of a Storm EP on L.I.E.S. was named to the best-of lists of Fact Magazine and Juno Plus, and she recently collaborated with Moog Music in modifying their analog circuits into new instruments for her installation, “The Exchange” at MoogFest 2016.
