Loss (Return)

Jake Parry - University of Manchester

‘Loss (Return)’ is a reflection of the inherent doubling of past and present that emerges from physical audio material. An exploration of time and space through the interrogation of obsolete media. Sonic artefacts from a range of sounding mediums were gathered; gramophone player, disks, vinyl records, cassette tapes and videos. In highlighting the ingrained artefacts; hiss, crackle, surface noise, distortion, imperfection, the piece engages with the spectral, uncanny quality of recorded sound. An eerie duet of presence and absence occurs through the interaction of these vestiges of sound technology. The voices of obsolete media become entangled and disrupt any stable sense of time. Through a postmodern lens, mediatic space has emerged as the violent disruptor of time. Dyschronia ensues, time stretches and tears and it becomes harder to differentiate present from past. Some fragments retain their inherent characteristics, others become spectral copies, blurred simulacra that morph into abstract shapes. Analogue remnants of the recent past are digitally reprocessed and reconfigured in a way that amplifies their force, menace and strangeness.