c8400.com

concert for reverb_

C8400 "concert for reverb_" CD/album release note

There's a constant flow of sounds surrounding us in our environment. Background music and sound becomes a part of our daily lives - on our workplace, in the shops, at home. Pure silence doesn't exist. And never had existed. Radio, cassettes and other sound transmitting/preserving carriers are presented to society as finished products, which cannot be altered any more. People become sound consumers.

There's a similar development of the sound reproducing/decoding appliances. The possibility of repairing or altering this appliances is decreasing, enclosed documentation is often insufficient and customers are forbidden to deconstruct the appliance during guarantee. An average person becomes a media consumer and a audio equipment consumer at the same time.

C8400 pays attention to this situation. C8400 uses consumer appliances - radios, cassette players, record players - to create original sound designs. Reproducing equipment becomes producing equipment. Appliances designed to a simple press-button-and-listen usage become "musical instruments".

C8400 uses appliances, which are products of the technological evolution of our civilisation, regardless of their original purpose to materialise c8400's thoughts, opinions and feelings.

Another aim is to point on the decreasing potential of creativity accessible to everyone. In the modern media world, the majority of people are forced into the role of consumers. Appliances become more and more limited in their functions, despite of the manufacturer's statements about universality and customisation.
The possibility of setting up an appliance independently is being more and more limited and replaced by a "wider range of possibilities" - a term resembling Orwell's newspeak, because in fact it means the restriction of the freedom to choose.

As an example let's take the tuning of a radio receiver. Radios manufactured 10 years ago mostly had a knob to tune in the right frequency. It was the task of the user to turn that knob precisely enough and to decide whether the signal is acceptable or not. If a very weak signal drew his attention, he could try to improve it by moving the aerial. Today simple radio receivers have digital tuners - with one or two buttons - and an implemented "autotune" function. As a extra feature they incorporate a few memory buttons (="extended" possibilities). The precision and sensitivity of the tuning process and the decision whether a signal is good enough or not is submitted to the technology inside of the radio. The user just presses the button and attends the output of the "black box".

In the same way manufacturers misuse consumers c8400 "misuses" electronic equipment made for reproducing/decoding sound. Using internal noises of appliances, interference, reverberations and empty endless vinyl tracks c8400 creates sound collages which aren't as much "fun" as tuning in your favourite radio station. These sounds should make the listener wake up from his lethargy caused by the infinite stream of amusement which kills the human ability to reason.