Extremity Cassette is a generative audio piece that imagines samples on a near-endless stretch of audio tape. Wound through a complex, multi-head cassette machine, the samples overlap with themselves, repeat, vanish and reappear. The magnetic nature of the machine itself picks up noises from the ether and mixes them with free reed and heterodyne sounds.

Inspired by the short story The White Death by Stanislaw Lem, where a planet made entirely of inorganic material is the crystalline host to fabulous machines, Extremity Cassette imagines a prehistoric mechanism that loops and churns out a never ending, ever changing musical score. Until one day the organic world is introduced … then rust interferes with the workings of the cassette … the sounds become progressively more erratic, and eventually stop.

Originally composed for Art’s Birthday, 17 January 2009, Extremity Cassette will play at the AGYU for Art’s Birthday 2011 from 5 January – 20 February 2011.
Peter Courtemanche (Absolute Value of Noise): VLF Antenna and Receiver
Anna Friz: Theremin, Harmonica, Kazoo, Melodica

Peter Courtemanche is a contemporary sound artist from Vancouver. He creates radio, installations, network projects, performances, curatorial projects, and handmade CD editions. His art works often have a literary basis – inspired by narrative texts and the history of specific installation sites. Works include: Preying Insect Robots (2006),  The Laughing Dress (with Lori Weidenhammer, 2008), Poison Mentor (2009), and The Silent Speaker (2010). The artist is manager of Second Site Collective (www.secondsitecollective.net), a group of artists who show experimental electronic art in outdoor spaces.
See also: http://www.absolutevalueofnoise.ca

Anna Friz is a sound and radio artist who divides her time between Toronto, Montréal and Chicago. Since 1998 she has created audio art and radiophonic works for extensive international broadcast, installation, or performance in more than fifteen countries.  Recent solo works include the multi-channel radio installation Respire for Nuit Blanche 2009 in Toronto, and For the time being, commissioned for the Äänen Lumo festival in Helsinki, Finland in 2010. Friz is a PhD candidate in Communication and Culture at York University in Toronto, and a free103point9 transmission artist.
See also: http://www.nicelittlestatic.com