Relays: Audiotape, Material Affordances, and Cultural Practice

Abstract

AbstractThis article considers the relationship between audiotape's material affordances and the audibility of cultural practices. Not all changes in the materiality of sound media are audible to listeners, and not all changes in the audibility of cultural practices require changes in their material support. Thus focus on the affordances of sound technologies – those possibilities of sound technologies that may or may not be engaged by its users, and the wide range of practices that such technologies support – can help to connect materiality and audibility. I address the affordances of audiotape by examining a number of small case studies where established sonic practices encounter a transition from phonography to audiotape: musique concrète and the tape loop, serialist composition, and Les Paul's use of overdubbing. Finally, I consider the nature of the audiotape archive and its mode of access in order to pose some general questions about the meaning and use of audiotape's affordances.