Photo: Press
San Fransisco-based composer, musician, and sound artist, Holly Herndon, unveiled a musical first this week: a song about the US National Security Agency.
New track ‘Home’ is a directed at the frequently invasive NSA and laments how Herndon’s feelings have changed about technology since the recent revelations.
Herdon said: “For my debut album, Movement, I communicated an intimacy with my laptop. It is my instrument, memory, and window to most people that I love. It is my home.
“The ongoing NSA revelations have fundamentally changed this relationship. I entrusted so much in my device. To learn this intimacy had been compromised felt like a grand betrayal. Is everything done privately on my laptop to be considered a public performance?”
The new track is distorted and eerie, choppy electronic samples and mechanical sounds contrasting with Herdon’s ethereal vocal, creating an uneasy sense of foreboding. “I can feel you in my room,” she tells the 'thing’ lurking in the darkest corners of her online world. And, the menacing - yet probably accurate - statement: “I know that you know me better than I know me.”
In the video accompanying ‘Home’, created by Amsterdam-based design studio Metahaven, Herdon is showered with icons and logos, including those of PRISM – a surveillance data mining programme used by the NSA – and Homeland Security.
‘Home’ is out now via RVNG, check out the video below. But maybe take a moment to clear your cookies first.
