Tuesday 29 January 2013

Alvin Lucier - Music on a Long Thin Wire

And, by the way, there have been some tests lately, there's a recording called "An Eighty-Foot Wire" or  "Music By a Long Thin Wire"–I thought this was a joke recording. It's an eighty-foot wire, they strung an eighty-foot wire out and they played a single tone through it and then they recorded it, but the eighty-foot wire did a single oscillation. The oscillation never varies. The oscillation [is] absolutely steady, the pulsations fed through the wire. And they recorded four LP sides, that wire creates the most incredibly beautiful sounds you've ever heard. And it doubled back, the sound[s] would come back and overlay each other, and there will be intervals of exquisite beauty. This is just an eighty-foot wire.

-Philip K. Dick, January 10, 1982.
 

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