The Magnetophone, by Croatian artist Hrvoje Hiršl, consists of a rectangular metal frame housing 12 magnetic play/record heads and a system of wheels which drives a magnetic tape around a closed circuit. The tape heads randomly play or record onto the tape at different points along its length, so that previous recordings are played or erased by new (re)recordings. This results in a fragmented multi-layered portrait of a dynamic acoustic space and of a sonically “self-aware” machine. Since the recording can begin at any point on the tape spatio-temporally, a multi-entry point feedback loop creates and records the machine-monologue. Assuming the starting point is a blank tape, the recordings increase in complexity and gradually degrade the acoustic memory of the process. The Magnetophone, as it recombines and re-amplifies its own sonic resonances within space, is in many ways similar to Alvin Lucier’s well-known work “I am Sitting in a Room”. Lucier’s work, by re-recording a passage of text, documents the gradual disintegration of spoken word into pure tone. As with Lucier’s work, The Magnetophone records both the sound of its own ‘voice’ and the resonance or formant frequencies of the room in which it is placed. Over time the characteristic sounds are recombined and re-recorded so that they become ever more distanced from the original through the interaction of spatial resonant harmonies. The multiple recording and playback creates a hyper-spatial feedback recording process so that after many play/record iterations only a sonic abstraction of deep, distorted, saturated echoes remain as a sonic signature of the space itself. Paul Prudence

 

Magnetophone