ANTHONY DISCENZA
Integer Composition 080111
Digital Audio, continuous loop
2011
AUGUST 6 -
SEPTEMBER 10, 2011
"Integer Composition" is a recent work consisting of a sequence of 1,000 randomly generated numbers read off by a synthetic voice. The work focuses attention on our uneasy relationship to the numerical statistics continually swirling around us. Though no context for these numbers is ever specified, the sequence conjures a range of associations, from population figures to corporate payout amounts. While our inability to fully process the stream of numbers eventually transforms the audio into a kind of white noise, the lack of specificity, set against the mind's inevitable attempt to search for meaning, generates an underlying anxiety that colors our experience.
Anthony Discenza is a multimedia artist directed by a preoccupation with interrupting the flow of information in various formats, primarily in video, but also other media such as computer generated sound, text, and street signage. Since the early 90’s, he has produced a series of immersive works which literalize and amplify the experiential space produced by our interaction with mass culture. In addition to his solo work, since 1994 Discenza has been one-half of the collaborative entity HalfLifers, along with longtime friend and fellow artist Torsten Z. Burns. HalfLifers fuses humor with a low-fi, improvisational approach to engage narratives of control and crisis embedded in technological culture.Discenza’s solo and collaborative works have been presented widely nationally and internationally, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Australian Center for the Moving Image, the Whitney Biennial, the Getty Center and the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive. His work has garnered critical attention in Artforum, Artweek, and ArtReview, among other publications, and is included in the permanentdistribution catalog of the Video Databank of Chicago. Discenza received his graduate degree in Film and Video from California College of Art and a BA in Studio Art from Wesleyan University. Born in New Jersey, for the past 19 years he has resided in Oakland, California.