Out now: Unknown Artist (2xK7)
I ordered four cheap digital recorders for a project with children a few years ago. One of them contained a recording and the three others were empty. When I pressed play on the recorder I could read « unknown artist » on the display. Someone pressed the REC button before placing the device in a thin plastic foil and in its cardboard box. It’s still unclear if it was done on purpose or if it’s an accident. The recording stopped 18 hours, 11 minutes and 50 seconds later, once the battery had run down. The mini SD card wasn’t full. It’s a 32 kHz, 16-bit, low fidelity mono recording.
As the device progresses on its path through shipping facilities we can listen to the sonic environment of a logistic center but also hear how the recording process itself is affected by the transport. The audio file seems to come from a warehouse in China, but the location of the recording site has not been precisely identified. Aoli Technology, the company that manufactures the devices, is based in Shenzhen.
Sometimes the recorder is moving so there’s a lot of vibration and shock, the microphone is rubbing against the packaging, the gain was set quite high and the limiter compresses the signal in a very distinctive manner. At other times the recorder doesn’t move and waits to be shipped further and the recording can be quite clear. The fact that this recorder arrived in my mailbox was so unlikely. To become the first listener of this piece of audio was a wonderful gift that I’m happy to share. Everything in this digital file interests me. The sound, the voices, the incomprehension, the context, the space, the length, the quality, the sound, everything. If I did this recording it would have been my best work by far.
