Label: MILLE PLATEAUX

2GB silicon USB, vacuum sealed in a clear screen-printed sleeve.

“According to Albert Einstein, events do not happen,
they are there and we merely encounter them in passing,
in an eternal present; there's no minor incidents
on the way, history is merely one long chain reaction.”
—Paul Virilio, The Original Accident

“When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck”
—Paul Virilio, Politics of the very worst

Flash and Demons are live performances executed by the Network Ensemble at precise times: 8 and 31 years after the symbolic stock market accidents of 6 May 2010 and 19 October 1987. Popularly known as Flash Crash and Black Monday, these are, respectively, the fastest and the first stock market crashes triggered by computers, unique entry points into the stream of algorithmic-induced noise affecting money and its survival network.

Stock markets are an important node within this network. Trading on them was once a person to person activity, then person to phone and eventually terminal to terminal. Now, software speaks to software as the living are abandoned in favour of the void of rapidity. To begin grasping the pressure, acceleration and saturation found in such networks, the sounds of Flash and Demons are generated with software and hardware built by the artist and able to translate a variety of network and financial data into sound signals, live.

The release includes an essay by Obsolete Capitalism.