Telematic Tape: Notes on Maryanne Amacher'sCity-Links(1967–1980)

Abstract

ABSTRACTReel-to-reel recordings and 15 kilocycle telelinks converge in Maryanne Amacher's telematic installation seriesCity-Links(1967–81). As long-duration recordings of urban sites,City-Linksqueries the musicality of ambient sound on tape, a question of critical importance to many composers of the period. But as expressly telematic tape,City-Linksembeds these recordings within a transforming US telecommunications industry where expanded long-distance dialing relied on the high-tech labour and gendered discipline of telephone operators, enrolling tapes’ ambient sounding in broader questions about the technological mediation of gender, listening and long-distance embodiment duringCity-Linkslate 1960s and 1970s span. An extended reconstruction of oneCity-Links's tape's tactile qualities interprets this complex interimplication as a kind of telematic ‘weave’, with a spatiotemporal warp shuttling between the weft of environmental sounds and their technical traces.