Thursday, September 13, 2007

Found sound hound bounds around town; rewound ground mounds resound & astound.

There's something beautifully obsessive about HarSmedia's Found Tapes exhibit. Seeking (or happening upon) discarded bits of weathered tape lying in streets, cleaning them up, spooling them, and playing them back to hear the sound of gems dropped casually to the concrete. Tracking, describing, photographing and Google-mapping the exact locations of the discoveries.

The resulting montage is a delightful listen -- more diverse than any radio station you could dream of (containing music from all over the world, and all up and down the scale from professionally recorded performances to answering machine messages), and somehow the lo-fi quality and jarring edits only add to the fascination.

Like sweet sugar bombs for my ADHD aesthetic sensibilities.

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