© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Photo © ZKM | Center for Art and Media
- Artist/s
- Timo Kahlen
- Title
- Signal-to-Noise
- Year
- 2011
- Edition / Serial number
- 8
- Category
- Installation
- Computer-based
- Material / Technique
- website
- Collection
- ZKM | Center for Art and Media
- Description
- The interactive work »Signal-To-Noise« (2011) relates to the history of recording media, to the Vinyl LP. An analog object, covered with scratches, with dirt, and embedded fragments of sound is seen rotating in space. The work emphasizes the unintentional mistake, the glitches, the deviation from the technical norm, in the difficult process of recording and playing back acoustic signals. What can be heard, as the viewer generates multiple layers of sound from invisible interfaces hidden beneath the flash projection of the scratched and ruptured rotating surface, is a grinding, dirty, dusty static noise, which leaves little room for the desired acoustic signal itself. The unbalanced signal-to-noise-ratio of what is desired and what is recorded, is the works main principle of design.
In the reconstructed version on view in 2023, three essential graphic layers in the center of the object have been lost - irrevocably.
Author
Timo
Images
Timo Kahlen, »Digital-To-Noise«, 2011. ZKM | Center for Art and Media © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Photo © ZKM | Center for Art and Media