Katasterismoi

«transformations into stars»

 . . .  is a purely electronic composition, entitled after Eratosthenes' compilation of those Greek myths concerned with the origin of the constellations. (Eratosthenes lived in the 3rd century BCE and was also the first person to measure the earth's circumference.) Various mythical personages were supposed to have been «rewarded» (i.e., generally «compensated» for some kind of violently shoddy treatment at the hands of the Olympians) by having their image fixed eternally among the stars. Our contemporary «katasterismoi» derive from scientific rather than poetic precepts, and concern such phenomena as supernovae and of course the theory of the big bang.

All I mean to suggest by the title is the process by which sound-materials, which in this case derive entirely from «concrete» sources, achieve their fixation (petrification?) in an electronic composition, transformed and recombined into new structures and configurations, some of which (like some constellations) betray the shape of their supposed origins, while others (likewise) are impossible to identify. Also, in the time of Eratosthenes, indeed until after Galileo's invention of the telescope, the stars were believed to be equidistant from the earth, whereas now it is apparent that most constellations as viewed from a terrestrial standpoint are composed of stars at unimaginable distances from one another, that is to say the patterns that they seem to form aren't «really» constellations after all.