FLAT EARTH SOCIETY
2008-2011 - 12 INCH VINYL
LISTEN TO THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH TRANSPOSED ON VINYL RECORD







LISTEN TO THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH TRANSPOSED ON VINYL RECORD

"Can we hear the Earth? Not the sounds occurring upon it but the Earth on a geophysical scale? [...]
The hill-and-dale technique was used in Edison's phonograph, recording sound with a stylus that vertically cut a minute landscape into the grooves of the cylinder. [...]
Flat earth society takes readings from the stylus of topographic radar, cuts them into vinyl and then plays them back with a stylus. Phonographic hills-and-dales grow into the Alps, Andes, Himalayas, Grand Canyon, Great Steppe, Great Rift Valley, Great Outback and the Lesser Antilles. Where Enrico Caruso and Nellie Melba once sang one hears the Baja Peninsula, Antarctic Peninsula, and the bathymetric pauses of the Red Sea and Baffin Bay. [...]
Peaks and valleys, spikes and wells, spires and troughs, aspirations and depressions, all have their gradations in mythical and actual landscapes." (Douglas Kahn)


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FLAT EARTH SOCIETY proposes a transposition of the earth elevation at the scale of a microgroove record. This engraving of elevation’s data on the surface of the disk generates in consequence a subtle image of the earth. When played on a turntable, the chain of elevation data crossed by the needle can be heard.
(produced with Flo Kaufmann and the ArtKillArt label)


-> Detaiilled presentation