‘In the history of technology, it is not all that rare for technological inventions to gain significance long after their inception’ Theodore Adorno (1969: p. 283)
It’s a great point to make that innovation in technology is considered better after an extended duration of time. The idea is that at the moment we fail to realise how great something is due to not having the context of what things will become.
Such organisations, trade shows and discussion sites have all contributed to a technology industry where, certainly over the last 30 years, new=good. Indeed, such utopianism surrounding the ‘new’ is ever prevalent in the sound and music technology press, which is much to do with their line of income so dependent on advertising revenue. Almost no recognition is given to technological precursors or vintage systems and is only acknowledged when mentioned in recordist interviews. The only exception to this is the magazine ‘Tape Op’, which – as the name suggests – gives more prominence to past and current analogue systems being used in today’s recording workplace.
This is something I myself have learnt the hard way, the idea the new=good is something really from capitalism, the idea that something new must be better because X Y or Z that we must constantly be upgrading our equipment to fill the pockets of the industry.
by following this quest for analog sound, digital technology helps to create an acknowledgement of analog aesthetics. This must not be seen as merely an act of nostalgia, but rather as a sense that the context of its use is what really makes a particular technology novel. (2007: p. 90)
The fact that modern digital technology has acknowledged and also create replications of analogue equipment is something that is of huge interest to me. What became the dominant hardware over analogue has become following and reproduction in a more accessible way.
In Ocean of Sound, David Toop criticises nostalgia in music generally, by suggesting,
…musics which attempt to make a nostalgic, exaggerated return (to past musics)…can only seem ludicrous at a time when computers think faster, clone replications at will and spread information over vast distances in intricate, often unidentifiable webs. (2001: p. 263)
Toop is correct here in saying that it is an exaggerated return. I never find nostalgiac music pieces to offer anything different unless progressed slightly or offer a different viewpoint form the pieces.
In his article, Analogue Artists Defying the Digital Age, O’Hagan reviews the work of Naomi Kashiwagi, a DJ using a gramophone and 78 rpm records, Claire Askew, a typewriter-dedicated poet and Lewis Durham. Whilst questioning whether uses of technological precursors in the wider creative industries is down to nostalgia alone, he cites the young artists’ decisions as being a reaction against digital culture, as he states:
The work of these artists is born of dissatisfaction with digital culture’s obsession with the new, the next, the instant. It values the hand-made, the detailed and the patiently skilful over the instantly upgradeable and the disposable. (2011: p. 2)
This I believe is a great point I also agree with, modern young people are dissatisfied with the current culture’s obsession with the new, the new and the instant gratification that digital media possess. There is a popular form of living called slow living in which people specifically decided to take time and enjoy the moment with their lives employing a more basic restricted pre-modern way of living. Most of these people will not have television or modern appliances in their houses. I think the idea of constantly upgrading is something that I dislike myself and find is not in the interest of consumers and users.
eBay has become a popular and wholly viable outlet for the sale of both current and second-hand sound recording equipment.
Today, there are few means by which precursors and vintage systems are sourced amongst the UK recording industry. The BBC Redundant Store and Abbey Road’s Sale of Century were instrumental in the resale of perhaps the first ‘batch’ of vintage technologies, particularly once 16-track analogue tape recording was superceded. Indeed, both outlets served as an important predecessor to the vintage market today. However, both outlets reinforced the perception that vintage sound recording equipment was either redundant, implying loss of meaning or function, or for collectors interest only. The use value of the second-hand equipment was largely ignored
Once again the internet due to access to communication has undoubtedly been key to the rise of analogue equipment in modern digital studios and recording spaces. Websites such as eBay have been critical to this distribution and locating. Old analogue equipment is difficult to find and tedious to fix, without such it wouldn’t be possible to even operate and maintain such equipment.
The certain ‘mentality’ Watson refers to is the wider cultural shift toward a technology-centric recording process as opposed to one driven by musical performance and/ or the influence of the recordist/ workplace. Such a shift can be traced back to the influx of affordable digital technologies of the mid to late 1980s and the rise of the music technology press. Latter-day online equipment fora such as Gearslutz focus almost entirely upon the technology itself, thus reinforcing a cultural perception that sound recording as a process is technology-driven.
the technology focuses on performance and musical influence is powerful, to think that the gear has more vice over the actual music and performance is an interesting take I hadn’t considered. Do we end up preferring the machines over the music and performances and end up doing this just to use the machines and listen to their effects. Are we more interested in the sonic palettes that these machines offer, the textures and tonalities than the recorded ideas?
Back in the early 1980s, proponents couldn’t say enough great things abut digital technology: how quiet it was compared to tape; how digital storage eliminated the problem of archiving; and how it made editing child’s play. All still valid points, a quarter-century later. However, it was easy to overlook one very noticeable shortcoming: digital didn’t always produce the most pleasing tones. (Simons: 2006: p. 14)
Similar to the last article but digital is clean, and analogue is warm. Digital is more convenient but doesn’t have flavour.
I’ve really enjoyed this short essay, I will definitely consider this for my work.