Brian Saia is a sound designer, composer, producer, recording engineer, and educator. He received his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he studied sound art and installation, and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts, where he studied experimental sound and piano technology. As a musician, Brian takes acoustic sounds from everyday objects and broken instruments and transforms them into rich sonic landscapes through digital and analog processing. It is this process that he uses to create unique, otherworldly soundtracks to award winning films showcased in such festivals as Sundance, Sheffield Doc, and SXSW. Believing art to be a powerful vehicle for communication and progress, Brian addresses social issues and community building through his teaching and in his sonic collaborations with organizations such as NASA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Brian currently teaches audio recording at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Brian produces music in the genres of folk, indie, post-rock, electronic, and experimental.
ARTIST STATEMENT
As a sound artist, I aim to re-imagine history through its sounds by exploring the audio-historical timeline of forgotten objects and places. I dig up buried sounds: Rummaging through yard sales, old attics, and antique stores, I identify and salvage articles that can be made to emit. Experimenting with these finds, I attempt to resurrect and orchestrate dead sounds. Primarily, my work strives to discover, navigate, and evoke the enigmatic past of geographies and objects. Immersed in this pursuit, I am often inspired by antique or broken instruments and by the desert landscape. With my music, I collect these lost sounds in one moment and arrange them to both individualize and intertwine their temporalities and histories. Moreover, the present moment and its technological advances offer a unique vantage point from which the possibilities of the past become endless. Through my music, I endeavor to compose a soundscape that, anchored in present sounds, guides the listener through a pliable past. Contemporary audio developments, like multi-tracking and digital manipulation, intensify and shape antiquated sounds within my work.
