Zane Merritt - Kaizo Mario (Homage to Roland Dyens) for guitar, Op. 55

The Japanese word “kaizo,” meaning “reconstruct,” has been used for decades to refer to the practice of hacking the code of extant video games to essentially create fresh and individualistic artistic statements. The classic Nintendo games starring the iconic (and by my estimation, morally depraved) character of Mario are popular targets of this practice, especially Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super Famicom in Japan). There is a large community of live streamers on the Twitch platform dedicated to playing and speedrunning these concoctions (my alter-ego lungfish3000, who streams at , may or may not be one of these people—his exploits are bountiful but unfortunately outside of the purview of these program notes). I chose Kaizo Mario as a title because much like the aforementioned games, which frequently invigorate extant technological archaisms into performing unintended effects and processes, my guitar writing for this piece utilizes guitar gizmos