intro(s) to Nowhere

I am very happy to announce that intro(s) to Nowhere, my first fully digital album, is now out in the world.

This album was created entirely from recordings of the Buchla 200 system during my residency at EMS (Elektronmusikstudion) in Stockholm last November.

During that month I was busy with my project, Technological Sympoiesis, which lies at the intersection of technology, artistic expression, and non-human perspectives. It is informed by environmental studies, object-oriented ontology, and it explores how we might form new relationships with technology.

While many instruments were explored during the residency (the Serge being a personal favorite), for this first release, I chose to focus solely on the Buchla, keeping its voice distinct. In this work, I tried to relinquish control and welcomed unpredictability, creating space for the Buchla to act as an agentic technological other.

Happy Tatiana with the Buchla 100 at EMS

The result is intro(s) to Nowhere, a digital album made from sounds that don’t want to be tamed.

Beginnings without ends.

When deciding on the name of the album, it struck me how instinctively we associate nowhere with failure, with loss, with lack of purpose. As if to be going nowhere means we’ve somehow missed the point. But for me, Nowhere became a place of possibility. Both absence and a destination not yet to be found on any map.

I was deeply moved, during this process, to discover Rebecca Solnit’s book A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Solnit writes about the many forms of being lost — both geographically, emotionally and existentially — and the unexpected power in surrendering to the unknown. She speaks of wandering as an act of openness, of deliberately loosening one’s hold on place and certainty. (And, for those of you who know me, you can certainly understand what a challenge that can be!) In doing so, she reveals the generative potential of disorientation, a perspective that aligns closely with the space I tried to inhabit through this work.

For the live performance at Tell Me More #4, the Buchla wasn’t physically present, but its voice was, and I decided to stage a dialogue between its samples and a group of other instruments/technologies I’ve recently started working with. These, still feel unfamiliar to me, which somehow felt fitting for a performance that’s all about unpredictability, relationality and unfamiliar territories.

intro(s) to Nowhere - album release at Tell Me More #4 Dokzaal, Amsterdam, NL

Thank you EMS for the time, wamth and spaces.

Thank you Laura for curating such a beautiful evening.

Thank you André for listening before everyone else, and every day.

The album is now available here: https://tatianarosa.bandcamp.com/album/intro-s-to-nowhere

Swedish winter, album cover - intro(s) to Nowhere