There exists, if you know how to find it, a secret TV station that was created in the 1980s as a way to test out government-made algorithms for discerning questionable content and patterns in human faces. The algorithms were intended to analyze CCTV cameras to detect evidence of illegal activity.
This channel, only accessible by tuning the television set to a specific frequency, acts as a dumping ground for the thousands of hours of data that have been corrupted during the analysis process, resulting in a 24-hour, amorphous loop of random clips from the history of television, some bent beyond recognition into splashes of random colors and blistering sound static, while others are haunting pictures overlapped on soundtracks from entirely different stations. When a plane passes overhead, the show — called Cittakarnera by the cult-like following that watches it — degrades into a mountain of crumbling sound. Cell phones further disrupt the signal. Each time an image repeats, bits of pixel have peeled off, and each day thousands of hours of television simultaneously playing over each other are added to the queue like a airborne garbage yard. Nature programs, classical music concerts, news broadcasts of fires and murders…
And now, thanks to sound artist David Kirby, a one-hour selection of some of Cittakarnera’s greatest moments are collected on convenient compact disc! Available from Copy For Your Records, Cittakarnera is a can’t-live-without compilation of classics. Imagine all your favorite documentaries piled on top of one another and run through The 80s Shredding Machine. A must-have for any music fan.
• David Kirby: http://homophoni.com/index.html
• Copy For Your Records: http://cfyre.co/rds
More about: David Kirby
