Porous Notion: Index Fragments and Interpretations

2012
Joseph Kramer

Porous Notion: Index Fragments and Interpretations is the presentation of select recordings from the ongoing sonic/material archive, Imperfect Index. These are private snapshots of home, simultaneously captured on and created by a system consisting of a specialized tape recorder and customized cassettes.

This mechanism, typically employed as a performance instrument, both records onto the custom tape and plays it back in turn. The result is a system that makes a record of the sonic space that also reproduces the recording from moments ago while simultaneously recapturing its own output. The system continuously collects new bits of sound that have either originated in the space, passed in through the window or electrical wiring, or leaked into the electronic circuitry of the device. These new sounds join the already recorded sounds in the accumulating sonic image as certain parts of the spectrum are reinforced while others are smeared away.

Documentary fragments, iterative overlappings, and intuitive reorganizations from this set of archival cassettes will be presented over the course of multiple broadcasts emanating from the gallery space at 6018NORTH as part of the exhibition Home: Public or Private?.