SEAN PATRICK FALING

SEAN PATRICK FALING

“The Future’s Past”

2014

4:33

In pursuing the lost aesthetic of the future, I create instruments that parallel gallery space and sound composition.  The objects I render are the manifestations of pre-digital-era design and applied science fiction.  I draw materials, design, surface, and ground from the visual representations from the era that influences my aesthetic decisions, beginning with the invention of the synthesizer by Bob Moog 1964 and concluding in the rich futurism content of the science fiction magazine Omni 1978-1995. 

Exposed to the images of futuristic worlds and instruments early in my life, I have retained the power of hardware and the curiosity of machines in this context.  The work of The Future’s Past embodies the daydreams of space age technology.  The experience of transformation is extended through flipping switches and turning knobs.  The destination likewise to the audience is unknown.  It is this notion of the unknown that beckons to be discovered.  In order to navigate new space, it is necessary for a participant to acquire new skill sets and instruments to experience the uncharted.  Offering these instruments of post-digital design, I render analog synthesizers, patch modules, and frequencies foreign to the harmonic-oriented ear.  The sound that is generated by these machines travels through spectrums of oscillating waves, frequencies rather than pitch, dials rather than keyboards.  With the Future’s Past I return us to a time in which the dreams of childhood discovery exceed the containment of reality.