ICC
OS2014
works
"Binatone Galaxy"
2011
Stephen CORNFORD dot

photo : KIOKU Keizo

Several dozen old cassette recorders make noises while mounted to the walls. The sounds coming from the recorders, however, aren't pre-recorded contents, but what the visitor hears are sounds produced by the recorders' motors and rotating reels. These mechanical noises are picked up and amplified by piezoelectric microphones installed inside each of the recorders.

Focusing on an old-fashioned technology that the advances in recording technology have rendered obsolete, this work explores the functional potential of the cassette recorder by reconsidering it as an original sound-generating apparatus. While originally neither the device (recorder) nor the recording media (tape) work without one another, here visitors can hear no pre-recorder sounds, but the recorders' own rhythmical mechanical noises combined with the acoustics of the cassettes' plastic shells, picked up in real-time by microphones. Listening to the sounds inside the cassettes and the voices of the machines themselves reveals a new meaning of an already consumed technology.

"Binatone" in the title was borrowed from the UK-based electronics/audio brand of the same name.

(ZKM Collection)

Stephen CORNFORD Profile
Born 1979 in London. Has been creating original devices that expose normally inaudible noises of machines, by modifying the inner structures and functions of such home electronics and audio equipment as tape recorders and CD players. In installations and experimental performances, CORNFORD continues to operate between art and music, exhibition and stage performance. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Sonic Art Research Unit of Oxford Brookes University.

related event


Performance & Artists' Talk
Stephen CORNFORD

Date: Sunday, June 22, 2014, 7:00pm - [Finished]
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