Works

Recent Works

Image of Catera's score for Decompositon USA

DeComposition USA 2020- (for expanded guitar). The Red Room-Baltimore, MD

A data ‘auralization ‘ of a graphical score based on Covid 19 fatality rates and Presdent Donald Trump’s national poll numbers from the onset of the pandemic in mid March to mid November of 2020. A random element is introduced when both increase. This was presented by the High Zero Foundation as part of an online event from the Red Room in Baltimore. More Info

Radio Resurrection-WaveFarm/ WGXC -Acra, NY

A life altering 2019 car accident acts as a point of departure for a broadcast focused on the eternal nature of radio waves and life itself. This Damian Catera/ Trish Kositzky collaboration was performed live on WaveFarm.org and broadcast on WGXC 90.7 FM in Acra, NY on December 7, 2019. More Info

Catera performing to the right of projection

E.O.H v. 2018 -De-Konstrukt-Brooklyn, NY

In this intermedia performance, a recording of Bach’s Musical Offering was fed into randomization algorithms and transformed via live improvisation. An abstracted manipulation of the score served as the projected visual component.
This was an updated version of a piece presented at Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center for the ReViewing Black Mountain 3 conference in 2011. More Info

DeComposition For Radios 2017-Fridman Gallery-New York

An improvised performance for 3 live radios and laptops. For this piece, the radio signals were fed into randomization algorithms yielding and unpredictable soundscape.
This was part of the Wave Farm 1997-2017: Twenty Performances For Twenty Years event which is a celebration of the Wave Farm’s 20th anniversary. More Info

The MYSTIC Way-Kresge and Pascal Galleries- Rampo College Mahwah, NJ (2015)

The Mystic Way was an automated audio surveillance system which was hidden in the ceiling of the cafe adjacent to the gallery. The system recorded sounds in the space and organized them into randomized soundscapes, which blended into the background. The piece was inspired by the NSA’s MYSTIC phone surveillance program, which collects bulk phone transmission data

This was part of the Turn on the Bright Lights, a show focuses on strategies of abstraction that formally and conceptually engage that which is invisible. The exhibit also included works by Kajsa Dahlberg, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Jason Mena, Trevor Paglen and Adán Vallecillo . More Info

.

Strategies Against Communication: NIGHT– Wave Farm- Acra, NY (2015)

NIGHT was a four episode interactive radio performance series, incorporating original composition, theatre and spoken word. The project was the latest in a twenty-year body of work utilizing chance and semiotics based compositional approaches for working with the written and spoken word. For this incarnation, the theatrical poem NIGHT, written by Patricia Kositzky and GE Schwartz served as source material for the experimental text processing. NIGHTas produced and performed during a 2015 transmission arts residency at The Wavefarm in Acra, NY. The four late night broadcasts consisted of algorithmic soundscapes, live vocals and an interactive component where participants called in via telephone and internet streaming. More Info

EOH V.6: The Magic Flute (2013)

EOH V.6: The Magic Flute was a multidisciplinary group of works revolving around Mozart’s 1791 opera. The sounds and score of Mozart’s piece serve as a point of departure for this exploration of algorithmic processing and randomization. During September and October of 2013, Outlet Fine Arts in Bushwick, Brooklyn presented EOH v.6 as a solo exhibit. The show consisted of a 3 channel video installation with 5.1 surround sound and digital prints. All material was sourced from Mozart’s Magic Flute. The exhibit is part of a larger body of work exploring the interrelation between philosophical models and cultural production. The sound component of the piece was created through a series of improvised performances in Baltimore, Washington DC and Philadelphia. More Info

Baroque Treasures (2014) & The Well Tempered Clavier (2011) –Praxis Classics

The first two releases on the Praxis Classics label. Both feature radical reinterpretations of baroque music. Compositions by Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Scarlatti and Albinoni are used as source material for a “decompositional” approach, where the original works are profoundly transformed into new soundscapes through the use of improvisation, digital sampling and randomization algorithms . More Info

Afternoon Delight– Droney Rose (2016)

Droney Rose is a Damian Catera/ Trish Kositzky collaborative project, where vocal harmonies, the popular song and sonic abstraction collide. Their debut album of revisionist 70’s easy listening hits is currently in the works. In this music video, a cover of the Star Land Vocal Band’s 1976 hit Afternoon Delight serves as a platform for engaging the electoral dysfunction of the 2016 US presidential campaign. Watch Video

Voyager NOW! (2013)-Hayden Planetarium, New York (INSAP VIII Conference)

VOYAGER NOW was a multimedia immersive live performance piece featuring projected animation (using the Hayden Planetarium Theater’s Fulldome), and two artists–Gerald Schwartz as the “voice” of Voyager 1, and Damian Catera producing a soundscape with real-time music. Voyager Now’s surreal, aurally-rich hypothetical journey of Voyager 1’s return to experience the Earth it left decades ago. This performance unfolds on an emotional and intuitive level, tapping into nostalgia for Voyager’s original mission and aspirations, and our own desires to come to an understanding with our own world in the present moment.

VOYAGER 1, whose gestures had been optimistic (we might even say quixotic) returns to EARTH, becoming a great panopticon, observing images and sounds of nativistic earthlings: clips of grainy video feeds from surveillance drones, bomb bay doors opening, the president’s brain, factory farms, police action, gun fetishists, religious dogmatics, militarized children, etc., which then morphs the craft into a very morose Boeing x-37, replacing its visual and sonic messages as it takes on a new mission extending a gravestone rather than an olive branch, returing to the annexation of space. Watch Video Documentation

The End of History (2009)-Hogar Collection, New York & Mason Gross Galleries, New Jersey

The End of History, is a series of sound installations, print editions and performances where pieces of baroque, classical and romantic music are algorithmically manipulated and remapped through random and probability based contemporary practices. The resultant soundscapes are a compellingly progressive combination of these disparate approaches and are realized via tools built in the MAX programming environment. The archival works on paper are manipulations of the source pieces’ scores, which visually represent the chaotic sonic processes. More Info

Van Vorst Park Sound Walk (2008) Jersey City Museum

The Van Vorst Park Soundwalk was an interactive sound art piece which simultaneously used the park as a musical score and instrument. The public was invited to experience the piece through portable headset radios as they walked through a loosely defined route within the park.

The piece operated with three limited-range low power fm transmitters which were situated along the route. Each transmitter played a component of the sound composition which was broadcast on a single frequency. As listeners moved through the park, with their radios tuned to the project frequency, the piece shifts and transitions between the separate components. In this enhanced environment, the listener becomes an active and crucial participant in the realization of the piece. More Info

contact: damiansound@gmail.com