steve roden moon (both receiver and transmitter...)

steve roden moon (both receiver and transmitter... there now remained), 2008 exhibition: solo exhibition, susanne vielmetter LA projects, 2008 moon (both receiver and transmitter... there now remained) was first shown at susanne veilmetter LA projects as part of a larger body of work related to the translation of musical notation into visual works. this piece was specifically inspired by the recent discovery of some drawings done with an apparatus designed by edward leon scott, called a phonoautograph in france in 1850. the apparatus created a 'drawing' by engraving sound with a needle into a soot covered piece of paper. scientists discovered the drawing last year; and although there was no playback device at the time, they were able to "play" the drawing using lasers and computer software. as a container of audio that is now audible, it is considered the earliest known sound recording. the audio is a 10 second fragment of a girl, possibly scott's daughter, singing the french lullabye: au clair de la lune. since the original process went from sound to drawing, i wanted to take the recent playback and turn it back into a drawing. the first step was to coat 16 strips of 16mm film with different colors of ink in relation to early photographic plates (the layout of the strips, in terms of their sizes, matched the size of scott's original phonoautograph drawing paper). i then took each strip, and with my eyes closed listened to the 10 seconds recording and scratched into the ink with a needle - becoming a kind of human phonoautograph machine. i then had the images transferred to video, and slowed the film speed down so that each colored segment with the lullabye transcription was 10 seconds long. next, i watched the moving lines and tried to use them as a kind of score, humming lower tones when the lines were moving left and higher tones when the lines were moving right. i did this with the whole film four times, and then depending on the density of the lines in a 10 second section, i used either one, two, three, or four of the voices. the entire thing was improvised. the title is two sentence halves from rilke's text primal sound, in which he talks about making recordings in grammar school using cardboard tubes, wax, and wire brush bristles. he also equates sound lines scratched into a surface with the lines on a skull. the "screen" for the projection was cast out of plaster from an early edison record (chosen because of the thickness). somewhere in this game of telephone, one moves through artefacts of various recording histories, to a place where transcription and translation are tools of transformation. the piece is looped and sound plays softly out of two speakers in a small dark room. moon (both receiver and transmitter... there now remained) is part of the permanent collection of LACMA, the los angeles county museum of art.		home bio exhibition & performance history images discography interviews press contact