Home | Concept | Body & instrument | Optical tonearm | Turntable platter | PIC code | Review
For this project we wanted to merge several of the most crucial audio technology inventions from the previous century into a hybrid object. The inspiring technologies include the phonograph, optical sound on film, the amplified guitar, and the computer. Each represents a different approach to generating, transmitting and/or encoding vibrations, from the spatial through the electrical and optical to digital bits, and each with its own expressive leverages and characteristic morphologies. This project embodies a continuum of audio technology interaction from the most physical hands-on of the vibrating string, to the abstracted turntable control of pre-recorded data, to non-physical control data in optical and electronic form, and finally to the completely abstracted and malleable digital domain.
Because of electronic amplification (the electric guitar being perhaps the best known example), the physical constraints of performance instrumentation became increasingly circumvented, leading towards the notion of the mixing console as instrument. The ability to capture and replay musical performance - the separation of sound from source - transformed the path of music beyond recognition. Because of tape and phonograph recordings, instantaneous improvisations became concrete objects, elevating, archiving and fetishizing the spontaneous nature of performance, while the ability to scrutinize previously ephemeral sonic detail opened the scope for new sonic excursions such as Pierre Schaeffer's musique concrête. Through optical sound on film techniques the possibility of abstractly designing audio became practical (in the works of Fischinger, the Whitney brothers, Norman McLaren et al). All of these revolutionary possibilities have been exceeded in scale and kind by the audio-enabled computer.
The cultural audio revolution is tied to the capabilities of the technology, but also tied to the ready availablility. Record players, electric guitars and computers have been present in the living rooms, bedrooms and garages of music lovers since their mass production began; a mass production that inadvertently led to the emergence of new popular musical styles. (If optical sound on film had been more readily available and affordable, who knows what artistic and musical styles may have emerged.) In each technology certain elements or features of the technology were abused and treasured, and certain constraints and tendencies inherent in the technology fundamentally shaped these emerging musical forms. Some of these treasured and abused features, constraints and tendencies have been exploited in the musical design of this project.