The ghosts of ephemeral communications
Aug 26, 2022, 02:11 PM
Composition by Neil Spencer Bruce.
"This piece is mixed binaurally and ideally should be listened to on headphones.
"Instantly the sound of the Teletype took me back to my childhood and a visit to an office with a teleprinter. There was something amazing, yet mysterious about the machine, the sound of it, the movement of the print head, never seeming to end, busy conducting its role of delivering and printing messages. In my young mind I had no idea where these messages came from or where they were going, they seems to arrive and be sent from the ether.
"I wanted to create a piece which featured a sample of the rhythmic pulse of the machine, endlessly responding to messages being sent or delivered. The messages had an ephemeral quality to them, existing only in their time, before a new message was delivered. The old messages passing on instructions which then created new messages of their own. There is something also industrial about the beat of the machine, which I wanted to exploit and explore.
"I only used the original recording in the piece, creating textured layers of rhythms in a tape loop style similar to Steve Reich. Other layers were pitch shifted up and down to create other teleprinter voices in this imaginary message factory. I used binaural mixing to give a sense of immersion in a world of ephemeral messages, communications which came and went, disappearing forever into the vast machine of progress."
This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
"This piece is mixed binaurally and ideally should be listened to on headphones.
"Instantly the sound of the Teletype took me back to my childhood and a visit to an office with a teleprinter. There was something amazing, yet mysterious about the machine, the sound of it, the movement of the print head, never seeming to end, busy conducting its role of delivering and printing messages. In my young mind I had no idea where these messages came from or where they were going, they seems to arrive and be sent from the ether.
"I wanted to create a piece which featured a sample of the rhythmic pulse of the machine, endlessly responding to messages being sent or delivered. The messages had an ephemeral quality to them, existing only in their time, before a new message was delivered. The old messages passing on instructions which then created new messages of their own. There is something also industrial about the beat of the machine, which I wanted to exploit and explore.
"I only used the original recording in the piece, creating textured layers of rhythms in a tape loop style similar to Steve Reich. Other layers were pitch shifted up and down to create other teleprinter voices in this imaginary message factory. I used binaural mixing to give a sense of immersion in a world of ephemeral messages, communications which came and went, disappearing forever into the vast machine of progress."
This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds