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.