A short video demonstrating the tremendous need to maintain Old Media.

Old media formats are generally considered to be niche media, the sort of pieces that only enthusiasts would use today. But in some cases the same could be said for even those artefacts in their heyday. One of the things I find most interesting is the processes of using analog media which I briefly touched on in my photo series on Analog is Beautiful. The idea there is that there is a human quality to the way we interact with analog media. My contention here is that those qualities that make the media beautiful also make it difficult, expensive and time consuming to not only maintain but just to use. In my post on Old Media is not Permanent Media I mentioned that a particular 4 track mixer I was using to playback a multi-track cassette tape or two, was not even working when I got it out. I had to ask my dad to help me fix it. We discovered that the rubber ribbon inside the machine had stretched after around a decade of simply being stored and would no longer turn the tape drives and this meant it was effectively useless. A quick fix with some rubber bands and some various other pieces fixed it temporarily. In order to use an analog synthesiser like the one at the end of the video takes similar determination. Programming an analog synthesiser is much harder than simply tweaking a few settings in a computer as you can imagine. The lens that I was modifying to work as a video lens, required a complete disassembly so that I could ‘de-click’ the aperture ring as it frequently got stuck (the lens is nearly 50 years old).

When we update our phones every two years, what place does a cassette tape mixer with busted insides or a 1960s lens have in today’s hyper busy-ness? Nathan G. Freier and Peter H. Kahn explore the effects of technological new media on children, commenting, “In 2006, the revenues accrued through MMORPGs exceeded $1 billion (Harding-Rolls 2007).” In a world where we can log into a virtual, surrealistic, perfect world, what on earth place is there for technology that takes time and care and love? Is the garage car restorer a thing of the past? In The natural life cycle of new media evolution, Sam Lehman-Wilzig and Nava Cohen-Avignore comment that “the length of each medium’s life-cycle and the time between each stage are also not uniform. Stage transitions are dependent on the appearance of new competitors; adaptation and survival is in great part a function of innate technological capabilities.” This would suggest that perhaps this technology is not worth maintaining, after all, all technology seems to have gone through similar disruptions in the past.

Nathan G. Freier, & Peter H. Kahn, Jr. (2009). The Fast-Paced Change of Children’s Technological Environments. Children, Youth and Environments, 19(1), 1-11. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/stable/10.7721/chilyoutenvi.19.1.0001

A short video exploring the deterioration of audio cassette tape, recorded with a digital 6-track mixer.

This particular piece of my Project Brief was a fun one. Essentially the idea was simple: show the way in which analog media decays by not only playing back tapes that had been stored for ten-fifteen years but also to illustrate the size and obsolete nature of old media. In this particular piece, I recorded a tape using a four track tape recorder-mixer that was considered to be extremely valuable, in today’s currency it would have been approximately twice as expensive as the Zoom recorder it’s connected to in the video, however the Zoom H6 is not only more capable, it’s recordings will not degrade naturally over time. The central theme of this particular piece is transience, specifically, of media.

The original recordings were a combination of demos of different songs my dad had, and even just to get the mixer to play the tracks, the mixer had to be taken completely apart and have a ribbon mechanism replaced with a rubber band. You almost certainly wouldn’t just be able to go out and buy and 4-track cassette tape mixer today so this process, I guess highlighted again, the temporary nature of all media; who knows when the H6 will be another useless piece of recording technology?

In “Perfect Sound Forever”: Innovation, Aesthetics, and the Re-making of Compact Disc Playback, Kieran Downes quotes J Gordon Holt, an editor of an underground audiophile journal at the time, “I wish to make it very clear that I do not, nor have I ever, asserted that digital reproduction is perfect. What I HAVE said, and still say, is that it is a helluva lot more-nearly perfect than any analog [record/play] system.” The truth is even the technology that was being described then was CD quality (that is 44,100 samples per second, with a bitrate of 16 bits per channel). Even a portable recorder like the Zoom H6 can record up to 96,000kHz/24bit which is ‘a helluva lot’ better than even what they were worried about then. In the Minidisc versus Cassette article in the Technical Update by the Oral History Society Vol. 27, No. 2, Alan Ward, Rob Perks and Peter Copeland discuss the recording quality of cassette by describing “an analog format: there is always some unwanted noise on recordings which increases in proportion to the wanted material each time it is copied. […] Cassette is not regarded as a serious medium for recording and preserving more complex sounds such as music.” The key here is the suggestion that using cassette to preserve data is impractical, because over time the tape warps. In some cases, this is an effect that digital music producers attempt to emulate but it is undesirable if you are storing the media for later use. It certainly surprises me that analog media was so expensive to use considering that a mixer to record to cassette was more expensive than a recorder that could be used today for professional use.

DOWNES, K. (2010). “Perfect Sound Forever”: Innovation, Aesthetics, and the Re-making of Compact Disc Playback. Technology and Culture, 51(2), 305-331. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/stable/40647101

Ward, A., Perks, R., & Copeland, P. (1999). Minidisc versus Cassette. Oral History, 27(2), 90-92. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/stable/40179549

Sasha Frere-Jones (2004) The Sound of Decay The New Yorker. Retrieved from http://http://www.newyorker.com/ on March 26th, 2017

Images of analog media artefacts taken with a Camera Lens from 1968.

There is certainly something tantalising, (as someone who never experienced vinyl as mainstream) about touching it. Just picking up a massive huge disc. The process of it. The whole simplicity of it amazing. It’s interesting that in a world where we have digital music (where the process of encoding and sampling is so complex) the vinyl record feels somehow more genius because it can be easily understood. The following collection of images is not just photos of vinyl but of all kinds of analog music and analog musical artefacts. From large 24 track tape reels that my father recorded his first album to in a studio to a 1980s, programmable analog synthesiser. The real deal.

The beauty of these images I think is what is truly amazing. Needless to say, there is no comparison to holding a USB with a mp3 on it. There’s no direct interaction, no relationship between the listener and the music itself. Picking up a record and being careful not to scratch it. All of these pieces are objects that one uses in the process of musical creation of listening. They are (were) things that you would interact with. There is something lovely about picking up a huge reel and knowing that by some wizardry someone stored their heart on it. There’s something human that I feel we have lost.

Dominik Bartmaski writes in the SAGE Journal of Consumer Culture, “Beyond its ‘rediscovered’ sonic specificity as a material container of ‘warm’, ‘human’ and ‘real’ sounds (Yochim and Biddinger, 2008), the story of vinyl is capable of disclosing the intricate nature of meaning attribution and its commercial and cultural consequences.” Here he is talking about specifically vinyl, however I feel this could more broadly be applied to analog. The idea that the medium is real, that it’s more real than anything that is digitally reproduced. Though of course, nowadays, everything is sampled as it is recorded on its way into ‘the box’. The vinyl record’s success, still today, goes beyond the subjective quality or qualities of the sound, but must therefore extend beyond into some level of deeper engagement.

The idea of ritual is important here as I think it’s interesting to note that upon opening up and finding all these things, I didn’t once even attempt to listen to them and perhaps that says something about the immediacy of digital and how the process, the ritual of engaging with this kind of media has fallen away, maybe less because of access but more because of laziness.

The decision to take all the photos with a Minolta 50mm f1.7 lens from 1968 was just an attempt to add another layer of meaning. The images are a little rough around the edges, some of the lens elements are a little corroded, the picture isn’t even in focus because the lens is manual focus only. Something of those ‘old’ imperfections adds character. Character, which I believe is the reason these ‘old’ media are so beautiful.

Leonardi, P. (2013). Materiality and Organizing: Social Interaction in a Technological World (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jenkins, M. (2007). Analog synthesizers (1st ed., pp. 10-13). New York: Focal Press.

Pinch, T., & Trocco, F. (2002). Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (1st ed.). Harvard University Press.

Bartmanski, D., & Woodward, I. (2015). The vinyl: The analogue medium in the age of digital reproduction. Journal of Consumer Culture, 15(1), 3-27.

This is the NAGRA IV-S (yes they did a 4S before Apple was cool). Its a real reel audio recorder! This particular model is one that RMIT also has in their museum of old media things in Building 9. You might think, looking at it, that it’s the sort of thing you’d find in a studio but not so! This puppy was to be slung on the shoulders of Location Sound Mixers with a strap and carried around for ten straight hours, YIKES! The NAGRA kept existing all the way until the latest one in 2008, the NAGRA VI, which has a big glossy LCD screen which looks a lot like a current Sound Devices or Zoom F8 style recorder from a modern film set. It is interesting following the various models of NAGRA recorders which kind of shows the way in which these huge tape reel recorders have slowly changed to become the audio recorders that we see today. It’s amazing to see not only the size comparison due to how much smaller sound amplifiers have become but also how much smaller media is. I look at the size difference between a Micro SD card and these reels (and these are very small reels) and it really gives you a sense of how far this kind of technology has come. One of the filmmakers I follow on YouTube, Niko Pueringer says that he measures how far technology has come by how much data he can fit in his mouth. Also this recorder only records two channels when a Zoom H6 that fits in your hand can record six simultaneous channels in equal or greater quality.

What role does the library have in a student’s work?

Well, I’m glad you asked. In my very limited experience the library has been purely a quiet study space. I know, lame. But thankfully, it appears the library is actually very useful. Today’s trip to Carlton library saw us actually engaging with the library in a research context. The thing that surprised me was how official everything is. The library provides a hell of a lot of books. I am honestly astounded that they have managed to catalogue all of the resources they have pooled form multiple online sources and their own collections. I actually had no idea that you could search so much of the library online; I imagined myself trawling through shelves trying to find the right book.

How do you think you will research in Old’s Cool?

My usual process for academic research was really searching jstor for hours trying to find a great source and then occasionally Google Scholar when I couldn’t find what I wanted. Of course, then, turning my internet history upside down to find all the various things I accessed that day and running them through citation websites and cross checking them. I think most likely I will use the LibrarySearch in conjunction with jstor pretty much exclusively as a starting point this year. I really like the ability to favourite and access things later without literally just burning through my history to find that killer quote I forgot to cite as I went. I think also a lot of research will come from old media artefacts.

Representing the library:

Books, Periodicals & Folios. All kinds of things.

Having ventured out into the world during our first class for Old’s Cool our aim was to capture objects or images that show ‘craft’ or something that is well crafted.

Carved Doorway

• Quite beautifully, the practise of stonemasonry is sometimes referred to as stonecraft.
• Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge and wisdom) describes “the craft of shaping rough pieces of rock into accurate geometrical shapes… some of considerable complexity”
• “has existed since humanity could use and make tools” – Citation is definitely needed for this wild statement but I dig it.
• Sometimes stonemasons lose their hearing due to the loud noises in carving the sandstone with grinders etc

Saxophone

• Though most instruments cannot be traced back to a specific individual or inventor, the Saxophone was most definitely created by Adolphe Sax, a german instrument maker who also improved the clarinet.
• The mouthpiece is the most important part in the manufacturing of a saxophone and the mouthpiece shape is most responsible for the tone of the instrument.
• The brass must be heated to a point that begins creating oxide residue and so the entire instrument is soaked in acid after being bent into shape.
• Saxophones are very often custom engraved which makes them even more unique. Expensive saxophones from some instrument manufacturers have different engravings on every instrument.