Valentina Vuksic – Harddisko

Valentina Vuksic

12″ – Artkillart
Artkillart is an experimental label supporting projects focused on the analysis and détournement of techniques and practices typical of the record industry. The label is accustomed to collaborations with sound-artists “seduced” by the idea of exploring the limits of the traditional physical substrates (CDs, vinyl records, tapes). This research area is not new for Valentina Vuksic, a conceptual manipulator whose approach to the digital technology is modulated in Harddisko, preparing raw and rhythmic auditive concatenations and variable sequences that have been extracted from sixteen different hard disks, all of them mentioned in the notes, with exact specifications of individual brands and models. Amplifying the sound features typical of every unit (with definite differences found between models) the result is a mass of bleeps, click music and fuzzy patterns, whose capture is mainly the effect of the mechanical devices themselves. The electromagnetic emissions have been collected into a form that is still “musical” and with an aesthetic valence, and work as a bare transposition of the devices, far away from any kind of functionality. The amazing packaging – a black plastic antistatic case, sealed with a sticker and individually numbered – reechoes of the singularities of the propagations. It may be difficult for the listener, however, to distinguish (after reactivating an old record player) which sounds were those actually recorded and which ones are the result of interferences due to an disconnected earth wire.