* Jliat "Still Life #5: 6 Types of Silence" CD
$10.99 "This latest installment in the Still Life series
trades the brevity and clarity of the previous two ('Jazz' and 'Rock
and Roll') for a rather enigmatic, lengthy, and potentially
destructive silence. "One of the fascinating things is that given the
medium of CD (16 bit 44.1 khz) you can have upwards of 65536 types
silence - all silent but in all the tracks there is different data!
As an artist working in this area I find this weirdness intriguing.
The permutations of the data are staggering as are the ideas
associated in such very minimal works. For instance, by mixing short
lengths of these silences, all the other sounds which you can hear on
a CD are produced. Given that CDs are *just* numbers other things
arise - just the first second of a CD has 65536 to the power of 44100
variations - working through these you have the first second of
any/all CDs From "My Way" to Beethoven's 5th! However this number is
quite large - there are only 10 to the 79 protons in the universe! So
although we can "hold" these CDs in our head - there is probably
insufficient matter and time to make them all. This (still life #5)
continues the series of works made by writing data directly to a PCM
file. In this work there are 6 ten minute pieces made by setting all
values in a track to the same binary values. There are 65536 possible
values in all - and so this number (6) of potentially similar tracks.
All result in producing silence - though all these silences are not
the same. Pausing the playing of a track will show this to be so,
for the data being played is halted and the CD system jumps back to
zero - resulting in a click (if the value 'playing' was not zero or
near to it). Interestingly this click is heard but is not actually on
the recording - it physically doesn't exist! It is the interference
of the continuos stream of data which causes the sound. Maybe
cosmologically things are created out of similar emptiness, or a jump
between two nothings. So each continuous set of binary values will be
rendered by the CD player as a DC voltage - which could be dangerous
to the electronics and speaker systems in some HI FI Equipment. This
is because playing a silence which is based on a very high or low
binary value at high volume will produce a high DC voltage in the
system. This could cause overheating of speaker coils and other
electronics." -- James Whitehead. Edition of 300 CDs in cardboard
slipcases. edition . U.S. edition xi
/:b
----------------------------------------------------
Rumori, the Detritus.net Discussion List
to unsubscribe, send mail to majordomoATdetritus.net
with "unsubscribe rumori" in the message body.
----------------------------------------------------
Rumori list archives & other information are at
http://detritus.net/contact/rumori
----------------------------------------------------
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
N© Detritus.net. Sharerights extended to all.