The cathode ray tube television has become a useless technology in this era of binary bits. It acts as the quintessential representation of the rise and fall of technology in our rapidly progressing society. As a child outgrows a toy, we have collectively abandoned the CRT, casting it aside to be scavenged for valued metals in the proverbial wastebaskets of our cities. In its modern character, seen as a combination of both archaic and nostalgic, the CRT is granted its greatest potential for experimentation and techno-resurrection. By way of building, bending and mutilating, de/Rastra shows the effects of altering the anatomical makeup of a CRT television, revealing the hidden potentials of the technology through the repurposing and restructuring of its own ability.

de/Rastra re-mediates a technology whose history is based in a one dimensional form of communication between broadcast material and receiver. The technology becomes repurposed as an expressive interface, breaking down the device’s ‘consumption only’ nature, accenting the materiality of the technology over its general use as a transparent communication medium.

de/Rastra: Performance and Installation confronts the cultural atrophy of these devices in two parts; a realtime audio/video performance, which has been actively performed under the title de/Rastra since 2012, and a new installation in which the artist brings the performance concepts into a meditative sound and light environment.