more on the 1987 tape

as i recall, this is what my family had in the 80s & this is the machine that record the 1987 tape. other than my dad’s voice i recognized at the start of the tape, i can tell it is recorded at my parent’s room in our big family house. we lived in the 2/f of an apartment which got 14 floors in total. i remember when i open the window i can hear the people below shouting on the streets. in 1987 there was not yet MacDonald in tai kwok tsui, what we had there are just a couple of small scale convenient store & some small restaurants. also i can hear the cars passing by and horns while i was singing a song about the road safety. for the mosquito song i can tell i was moving along while singing since the recording shows my childhood voice varies.

i asked my mom about what the recorder is in the middle of the recording, so i guess i had no idea what a cassette recorder is before? i also mentioned something about TV game which i suppose should be the Vectrex my family had at that time. 

 

i kept asking my mom about the cassette tape recorder and somehow i was looking for a microphone to hold on, that is why i touched the machine and generated some noises. in the last part of the recording my mom kept asking me about my grandmother so she repeats ‘popo’ for a few times.

 

---

 

 

it is somehow interesting as we had the discussion about the tape weeks before. after recorded the tape, my mom seldom take it back to have a listen. it’s like as if the recording activity is more important than the playback procedure. my mom tried to do so only to provide me a snap record of myself in 1987; but seems not much more to be done after the tape is made. the act of recording since serves like a parent-child activity, just like some parents will bring the cildren to go to the park. i can tell my mom is not that serious about the recording since some years later she make use of the tape leftover to make another recording for her language learning practices. i felt a bit unhappy with it since the tape somehow takes me back to the 1987. anyway now i digitize the recording and thus my key to 1987 is always there on the internet.

there’s no turning back. but nostalgia is not that harm.

abt the 2 sides of the cassette

cassette title:

cartridge memories    カートリッジのメモリー

 

the final outcome of my cassette tape is now renamed as “cartridge memories”; it was originally named ‘codenamehk: cartridge” but later i decided to make the cassette project a new series of artwork. i hope this is just another beginning of a new series of sonic artwork of mine.

the title is a homage to a song from the TV series Amachan (あまちゃん) which called 潮騒のメモリー (Shiosai No Memory). while the song brings us to our 17 years old time, my tape was intended to bring us the memories of the 1980s in its essence way.

the tape was made with the current available cassette tape i can get from the market. i remove all the labels on the tape to hopefully keep it in the most simplistic outlook. it is a 60min tape so each side is 30min.

 

---

 

side A

title: no input symphony (ノー・インプット・交響曲)

 

side A was a 25min one take experiment that i made with my 4track recording machine. i use the recorder as a 8input mixer & try to do a no-input exercise with it. 2 of the channels go into a feedback loop, 2 go to nothing & i try to touch the tip of the cable with my bare hand to create a static noise, 2 of them simply do nothing there but i try do the audio gain in maximum way, and last 2 are really nothing left there. i also make use of a portable guitar effect unit to serve as a effect send/return unit; while i amend the setting on the effect it dramatically change the sound of the output. i output the audio signal without inserting a tape into the unit but make use of the monitor out.

for 25mins i try to explore what kinda sound i can get from the 4track machine. from time to time i start slowly on how to control the sound that i desired. such a recorder is no longer a recorder in this way of practice but it’s a sound generator. in this way i try to question whether the relation between produce/record is still valid in a give/take practice.

 

---

 

side B

title: hymn of CRT TV (ブラウン管テレビ讃歌)

 

side B of the tape is another 25min of sonic journey. this time i try to play with a 80s CRT TV setand try to connect some guitar effect pedals into it to create a simple video synth. it was originally a project called ‘codenamehk: monolith’ which is a audio/visual composition. for the cassette i only include the audio part of the work. to complete the feedback loop i try to connect a telephone pickup microphone to the TV screen as an input to the efx chain. the outcome is a flow of noise swash, mainly like a sea of white noise, which we sometimes encounter on the malfunction CRT TV screen.

the CRT TV is another memorable technological artifact in the 1980s and i find out that only such kind of TV can offer such possibilities to experiment on the input. nowadays more advanced TV offer digital input whereas we cannot meet the white noise screen anymore. the more resolution, more finite of a picture/pixel we can get; the less possible ways for experiment on the formation of the image. the nature of how we perceive such projection of images on a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) seems like more simple, or direct, when compare with the latest LCD technology which requires a couple of filters before the images come to our naked eyes.

the title is another homage to the single of jpop group Momoiro Clover Z (ももいろクローバーZ ), 労働讃歌.

meanwhile… under production

some recordings on soundcloud

 

 

 

02122014_edited

 

source of the master.

some MORE experiments with CRT TV set & guitar efx

there’re a couple of experiments i did last 2 weeks for yuk’s final project

[yuk’s in charge of my Independent Studies project]

the original idea comes from the monolith @ stanley kubricks’s 2001 & the VHS

he suggested me to try do some Audio Visual work to integrate the works i am working with you currently

 

so here they are, these are some clips i made

all i have is just a Sharp CRT TV Set, a bunch of guitar effects (mainly korg ampworks, 4ms noise swash)