Transspray

Originally released in 2004, this release is the third part of the Transall Cycle -- A cycle of three 21-minute CDs with an exclusive cover design created by the artist.

Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto explains the concept of his work: "Speed of data-flow is equivalent to the speed of our time. In an era when virtual products of our ideas are expanding, we are simultaneously positioning a calm point in which to settle ourselves. The state of rapidity in which our bodies and the objects around us exist is being replaced by a new economics of anxiety for resources. Only the rudiments of rapidity remain in the form of a crude distribution. The burying and codifying of information makes information available to only a few. This closed circle repeatedly tries to establish new mechanisms to restrict access to these possibilities. In order to realize these concepts, strategies are created not only to absorb information, but also to diffuse and atomize it."

The Transall Cycle is made up of three CDs: Transrapid, Transvision and finally, Transspray. The combined parts together address the problematics of speed, the vision of utopia and the dissolution of our ideas into fragments. Text, image, vector graphic -- storage files, were translated into raw audio data as the source material from which constellations of diffused sound start to form. Special emphasis is put on the rhythmic aspect of the digitalized and rasterized data. The tools of their transformation reveal themselves by the structure of the recordings. By the restricting itself to simple and transparent mechanisms, this process becomes independent from existing standards and gains autonomy. Transrapid, Transvision and Transspray, follow on from the Transform release of 2001, thus closing a circle, relating to the transformation of sound into the immateriality of frequency. Alva Noto aka Carsten Nicolai has worked on this material over a period of more than two years.