(DUST013, edition of 24)

When I realized my cell phone had a sound recorder whose capture sounded very similar to that of a cheap tape recorder, I started spending a lot of time recording birds in my neighborhood, high winds, and the like. This attention paid to the world around me also served to get me more acutely interested in all the transplanted “natural life” lining the streets of Ann Arbor, which got me using the same phone to snap pics of some of the more bizarre, mutant strains of city-damaged plant life. Cities, even the cute small ones, are like The Blob, covering and absorbing all in their path; Earth, however, is resilient, and has a way of bursting through the loose seams of man’s gooey concrete tarpaulin. That incredible strength against manmade adversity, ironically, had inspired me to utilize planet-destroying media to adapt small snippets of beauty to my own perverse ends. To wit: on this cassette, nature sounds were collected via cellular phone, transmitted via e-mail, edited in iTunes, manipulated via analog and digital effects, sequenced using cassette tape and/or mp3, and composed utilizing a Tascam 4-track cassette machine. This overly complex process, simultaneously hi-tech and lo-res, is thus used to illustrate humanity's uncomfortable, oft-hostile/destructive relationship with the rest of nature.