Adam Basanta^CA/QC

Adam Basanta uses consumer technologies and laptop manipulation to create art that oscillates between harmonic and static, recognizable and otherworldly. Placing technologies in unconventional and absurd relationships, he opens a window to listening differently, letting us reimagine our own complex relationship with software, machines and data.

In minimalist electronic compositions and performative installation art, Basanta disrupts the original function of technological objects, revealing their deeper social and cultural entwinement. Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Vancouver, Basanta moved to Montréal to continue his studies in contemporary music composition, exploring minimalist experimental soundscapes, sound-object pieces and environmentally inspired open narratives. Over the next decade, he expanded his endeavours into an extensive mixed-media art practice. One of his early installation-performances, Music for 12 Lamps, featured 12 light and sound emitting domestic lamps arranged across a space, hinting at the trajectory of his career to come. He's performed and recorded with several musicians and new music ensembles, including avant-garde saxophonist Jason Sharp. His Only, only, only, only composition for String Quartet and 4-channel feedback network stretches and reverses Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" into a foggy tune, lost half outside of time. Basanta's most recent live electronic performance, Intricate Connections Formed Without Touch cuts, slices and re-arranges the instrument's tactile plucks and strums, using short digital fragments of sound to render the original improvised music synthetic—yet still resonates with rhythmic buzz, string-like jangles and harmony.

Basanta performs Intricate Connections Formed Without Touch as part of MUTEK's experimental Play series, re-interpreting the album live and bridging his inventive musical ideas through improvisation.