Mark Cetilia: Impact + Aftermath

Mark Cetilia is a media artist who often focuses on designing and implementing complex generative art and sound creations systems. This latest release, only 200 copies of which were printed, presents two suites both recorded live in Providence, Rhode Island at two different locations. The straining climax of the first track, “Impact”, is characterized by a hissing continuum of signals, which are used as source material and a hypnotic source of ambient diffusion. In the second track the sound is almost imperceptible: after turning up the volume of our stereo to the maximum we could only perceive a dull hum, barely recognizable by human ears during the first five minutes of listening. The subsequent five minutes are almost as quiet, so it is only after ten minutes that it is possible to discern some liquid, almost natural sounding audio emergencies, along with some synthetic frequencies. Finally, the work returns to an almost absolute silence. Here is a return to the popular theme of remodeling our perception of “hearing”, a real obsession in some experimental groups – a game that may get out of hand if taken too far. This work, however, manages to generate a cohesive and distinct style, situating itself amid a balance of digital and analogue techniques. Cetilia is a versatile personality: he is a member of the electroacoustic ensemble Mem1, a member of Redux (with Joe Cantrell) and a PhD student in music and multimedia IT at Brown University. His repeated alternation between deconstruction and recombination, absences and presences is not the result of a superficial work. This level of intensity is not a one-off either; it is typical of all his live performances in Europe and North America.

– Neural (2014)