We’ve been beaming TV signals into space for decades with no reply, or at least none that we can decipher. What if it’s because those advanced life forms couldn’t play analog transmissions, and now they’re so friggin’ far beyond digital? Our quasi-scientific, quasi-philosophical musings are inspired by the Other Cinema’s video program “The End of the Analog,” featuring the latest performance piece by East Bay duo Eliot K Daughtry and Kriss De Jong, aka Killer Banshee. A Wake for Analog finds KB snatching samples from the petrified remains of American broadcast history to construct an improvised tour of an imaginary day on television from sign-on to sign-off. Self-described electronic artist/noise composer Thurston Graham supplies the accompaniment, filling the aural sphere with irreverence and flair. It’s a show for anyone old enough to be nostalgic for signal interference — from snow to horizontal roll — or young enough to have missed out on the ephemera, and frustration, of overlapping channels and unwanted flickers. Wait a second — what if the ghost images were the extraterrestrials trying to communicate with us? Maybe we should have kept that old Motorola.
Sat., May 23, 8:30 p.m., 2009
