Sound performance that explores analog video materiality through digital activation. 

The de/Rastra oscillographic synthesizer is a real-time audio/video instrument and computer-interfacing device that allows a performer to generate visualizations intrinsic to cathode ray tube technology while simultaneously creating the acoustic analog of the displayed imagery. By way of building, bending and mutilating, de/Rastra shows the effects of altering the anatomical makeup of a CRT television, revealing the hidden potentials of the technology through the repurposing and restructuring of its own ability. Through hacking and exploiting the capabilities intrinsic to all CRT devices, the technology becomes repurposed as a performative interface, breaking down the device’s ‘consumption only’ nature. The performer is given control over the technology by removing it from the intended application and forcing it into an active state through a combination of physical and mental effort.

By structuring the de/Rastra around a 1970’s television, which is literally worn by the performer in a fashion similar to that of a guitar, the performer’s actions become directly connected and transferred to the CRT, concentrating both the performer’s engagement to the instrument and the resulting visualizations into a centralized object. Oscillons materialize through variations in pressure applied to force sensing resistors as well as though movement of the instrument in space as sensed by an accelerometer. Though the sensors and switches are ergonomically placed on either side of the television, the weight of the instrument and its requirement to be moved in all directions creates for a physically demanding performance.