----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Dear empyre Collaborators,
I am sorry that it has taken me a few days to kick in to our epistolary
project but I have been enjoying the dialogue enormously. I spent the last
two days showing my films and videos in Nashville at Jack White's (of the
notorious band The White Stripes) Third Man Records as part of their Light
and Sound Machine series. Surprisingly enough, my time in that enthralling
analogue audio universe reminded me of my two residencies (2001, 2006) at
the Experimental TV Center. As the world hurls itself into the
intangible galaxy of the digital and the virtual, I find that more and
more people in the media arts are keen on making, watching and owning work
that has been created in an analog fashion. At Third Man Records, I was
asked to screen mostly 16 mm, for example. While touring the facilities, I
was informed that all of the rock n roll music that is recorded there is
done on records rather than CDs. How could this be! The facility had
actually spent thousands of dollars to refurbish equipment with knobs and
sliding volume controls. Touring the rooms with all of this seemingly
antiquated machinery took me back to the discoveries I had made at the
ETC. I suppose we yearn for this kind of tactile engagement with the gear
because it offers us a sensory contact with the process, but I don't find
that this yearning is simply a kind of nostalgia. Most of the people in
the audience were in their 20s and 30s. They had recently sat through a
much heralded screening of Nam June Paik videos called "I Make Technology
Ridiculous" Here in the country music capital of the world, we were all
trying to come to terms of the most satisfying mode of production for a
form of art that, in the end, will remain intangible, ephemeral and
weightless.
Writing to come -- the one woman-band concept of production that was so key
to becoming one with the the machines at the ETC
More soon and see many of you at Hunter College upcoming tribute to the ETC,
Lynne
--
Lynne Sachs
www.lynnesachs.com
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
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http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
