Sounding the Object: a timebase archive

David Toop

doi:10.5334/jcms.1011203

Abstract

A proposition for a hypothetical environment in which intangible multi-sensory events can be experienced as if in a museum. This museum of the imagination displays various sounding devices and listening events, all of which are footnoted by ancillary theoretical, conceptual and anecdotal material from the author’s sound work practice and research between 1971 and the present.

Highlights

Researching in the sound archives of the BBC in 1971 I came across a recording of a live beetle jews harp from Papua New Guinea
The Wasp Flute, made in 1973, was an instrument built according to these principles and clearly influenced by the live beetle jews harp along with other unusual instruments that could be viewed in collections such as the Horniman Museum, London, and the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
If a musical instrument becomes a sound source rather than a machine for delivering a particular system of musical theory where are its boundaries? Can it be described as an object or is it a cluster of events whose material presence is only one point on the time base? there was the irony that the instrument was silent, a condition shared with the extraordinary instruments displayed in museum collections

Summary

Introduction

Researching in the sound archives of the BBC in 1971 I came across a recording of a live beetle jews harp from Papua New Guinea (this unique artifact had already been released on a BBC record compiled by John Peel so I knew it existed but to find the ‘original’ was exciting). A complex thought process is evident from this shaping of available material and the devising of two separate ways to generate sound through physical action and yet the economy of the live beetle instrument is impressive.

Results

Conclusion