Skip to content

Jan 23

Vinyl Revival

Saturday night. A good meal and a few beers to the better. I am sat in the living room of my parents house. I suggest to my Dad that we play a few LP’s.

Looking through the album covers is like looking at works of art, and then there is the experience of pulling the record from the sleeve. Pop, crackle, the needle hits the track. Fuzz, hiss and the first chord is struck.

To all in the room, it was like discovering music for the first time. The quality of the sound oscillating from the speakers tugged at every emotion. You could feel the bass and almost witness the guitarist strumming. It was media in its purest form. The crowd cried out for more, and before the end of the night the room was dancing.

Why did it sound so good? Why did it affect us so strongly? Some clues can be found in our tolerance for quality. The innovations and social pressures of the digital age has suckered us into convenience as a replacement to quality.

Listening to that Hi-Fi on Saturday night I was reminded of what it feels like to have a band playing right there in your living room and later it made me think about what we have lost in our great march towards iPods and online players?

According to the article ‘Are You Buying Pre-Ruined Music‘, the formats adopted by popular music players is about one-eleventh the size of a full resolution CD, so the quality is invetibitably far inferior. It goes onto say that that such low-resolution tracks played through an iPod docking station that feeds into a decent hi-fidelity sound system is a disaster area.

Digital was designed for convenience, carrying your music with you when travelling or out running.

“I for one live and continue to use vinyl” Daniel Ek CEO of Spotify. According to Daniel, they believe that a lot of people will dip into music first on Spotify, and if they like it, they will buy it on vinyl or CD. Spotify is not a replacement medium. The evidence seems to confirm this claim – 86% of music sold in the UK is in physical form. While sales of singles are now almost exclusively digital, albums remain physical, with just eight per cent downloaded (1).

Presumably the tech industry will respond by improving bandwidth to rival the quality found on CD or Vinyl, but will they ever replace the tacit feeling of holding a record or the sense of ownership one receives from owning that experience. Where does the pop and crackle come from?

Perhaps technology was only ever a convenience. It was never meant to replace life, simply here to help us out a little.

I suppose there will always be two camps. Those who see the convenience of the web channel as a replacement medium and those who look to technology to simply manage the data that sits around our experiences with media, possibly capturing, sharing and documenting our experiences.

I have an inclination that the model could shift back a little. Back to high-fidelity sound, pure music, where we actually listen to instrument, voice and soul. The Internet is only an add-on that we use to collect and feed data. It is just data.

As we move further into 2012 it seems that even bigger questions are being asked of technology? According to Daniel Sieberg, technology has overwhelmed our daily lives to the point of constant distraction. Many of us can no longer focus on a single task or face-to-face conversation without wanting to reach out—or retreat—to the virtual world every few minutes. This is a real and significant problem (2).

Looking to the future of technology, John Harlow writes in The Sunday Times that after a technological advance from the iPod to Twitter, the flood of true innovation seems to have dried up – “techies are running out of ways to rock our world… Apple, Google and Microsoft are now mature refiners, concerned about their environmental footprints, not radical change, and with share prices to defend” (3).

Stronger challengers take this much further. Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, passionately argues that Silicon Valley is only interested in harvesting quick profits at the expense of creating truly disruptive technologies that will solve some of the world’s biggest problems, for example, famine, cancer and new social and political systems (4).

Whilst the media and technology wars will inevitably play out for how and where we access our next media hit, I think I might take a moment to sit back, source myself a record player and start putting together the components for hi-fidelity sound. Bring on the revolution. It is the vinyl revival people.

And if the tech industry can do anything for us, can they please figure out the basics like a phone that actually keeps a signal?

–

1. Is this the end for your CD collection? Andy Kerr, Whathifi.com, 04-Jun-2009.

2. The Digital Diet: The 4-step Plan to Break Your Tech Addiction and Regain Balance in Your Life. Daniel Sieberg, Souvenir Press Ltd, 01-Dec-2011.

3. Out with the old, in with the … arm, any ideas anyone? John Harlow. The Sunday Times, 15-Jan-2012.

4.Peter Thiel To The New Yorker: “I Don’t Consider [The iPhone] To Be A Technological Breakthrough”. Techcrunch.com. 21-Nov-2011.

Jan 10

Obsession with speed

Who is advising the UK Government and why are they so obsessed with speed? If the last ten years has taught us anything it’s that speed does not make our life more convenient and pleasurable. If anything our life is more hectic and harassed than ever.

What then this High-Speed rail network proposed for Britain. At a cost of £33bn (where has that money come from?) it aims to decrease the travel time between the North of England and London.

After living between Preston and Westminster for the last six months I am one passenger who is more than happy with a journey time of 2 hours (fast!).

What I crave more than anything else is comfort. I want to know I am guaranteed a seat. I want to I don’t have to fight through crowds onto the platform at Euston. I want to be able to pass my heavy luggage to a carriage dedicated to that task. I would like the chance of a decent meal, good wi-fi and cheaper tickets. And if my seat were to recline, well, I’d be living the dream.

One day the decision-makers might give a thought to quality of life over speed, but they might never slow down enough to actually think that one through.

Jan 8

1 Comment

The true anarchists

I walked by a TV yesterday, and the presenter, talking about the Industrial revolution, suggested that there was a well known campaign against the movement towards mass production. Those individuals were concerned that society would lose too much in the way of creativity, skills and community.

I don’t remember hearing this debate at school (one side of the argument presented), but I think it could tell us a great deal about the state of The Great Technology Sitcom and how we should look at it.

Who are the true anarchists?

Dec 3

Travel Before Travel – Preview Exhibition

Travel before Travel – Preview Exhibition. UClan’s Victoria Building (Preston, UK) on Tuesday December 6th.

More information can be found at Martin Cahill Photography and/or simply follow the tag ‘travel before travel‘.

All Welcome. Wine and Nibbles.

Nov 11

Decasia: The State of Decay. A film by Bill Morrison

Merry-go-round. Nothing much to do with anything. Just for fun // The baby looks aged. The life transparent before it has even begun. // Oliver Twist . // Who or what is the boxer punching? // Death, pain and suffering contrasted with lightness, humour and touch. // A play on human emotions. // The film plays with our sense of time, in particular the references and aesthetics like the Egyptian hieroglyphics, even though the film could not have been shot more than 100 years ago and the birth of the camera. The pictures suggest we are looking at the beginning of time – the first dawn, the first sunset. The decomposition strips away reference of time and we only see human form – love, tragedy and drama. // The pictures and the intentional message of the film becomes something else – mutated. // Is that a bird or a plane? Birds of Prey or a Spitfire? // Just because it looks weird, does it mean it’s good?

Nov 3

Lost Book Found from Jem Cohen

Those things that are left behind. // “As you live, you leave traces.” // Is there any order. // “Nobody makes the world, it is just a place you are born into.” // There is a musical rhythm to this film; a beat to each image/scene. // Classifications and patterns. // “Glass is a liquid.” // Reflection of life – What is it? // Just look. We often never see. // Signs, messages, notes, graffiti – are these clues to a greater meaning? // What ties things together? // Obsession with retail, shop fronts, capitalism and commerce. // “We exist to perform a function.” // When you push ideas together what does it create? Can you clash images together? What comes out as a result?

Oct 19

War Photographer

“I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.”

James Nachtwey.

Documentary war photographer James Nachtwey, considered by many the greatest war photographer ever, describes some of his experiences as the express elevator to hell.  // Poverty, genocide, political unrest. Not just war photography. // Are you a participant or an observer? Is it right to stand back and watch a man get killed? // Famine – the most destructive weapon in war is starvation. // The images are a form of communication, but James never feels complete or satisfied with his work. Over the years his sense of purpose grew stronger - “the subject is more important than myself” James Nachtwey. // He gave up everything for the job. Any normal sense of a relationship or family life. // James has the optimism and belief that war will not be forever and that his photographs will force people to look at it and to make the change. His optimism is what keeps him going. All emotion, anger, remorse he tries to channel into his photographs. // “Is it possible to end human behaviour that has been there since the beginning through photographs? Is photography the anti-dote to war?” James Nachtwey // The photographer is putting himself at risk to mediate for peace – “nothing is worth the pain … If you were there you would change it … But not everyone can be there. That is why you have photographs.” James Nachtwey. // “Personal ambition should not overtake personal passion” James Nachtwey. // He lives with himself because he connects and lives with the subject. // Do these images need to be graphic to get a reaction in today’s de-sentised world? // We are dealing with hugely complex issues. Issues that are often simplified by the mass media and presented as a snippet of entertainment. Images can though effect change, but is it the censorship that actually effects change? Vietnam (James Nachtwey’s inspiration for his career) and the images came back to change public opinion. Since then governments have controlled image, but is again being challenged with the Internet, but having said that, the lay-man is still fed content through media corp and popular websites. Controls therefore come from the consumer. They demand the entertainment and the simplicity. People who buy a photo-book already believe in the subject matter.

Oct 19

Karl


From martincahill | photography.

Oct 16

Meaning & The Single Image

“The relationship between what we see and what we know is never settled”. John Berger.

When given a photograph you read all four corners of the image. You look at parts within that photograph to determine meaning (the internal structure of an image).

John Berger states “All photographs are ambiguous”. A photograph has fact of object, but any analysis is surely false. “Only occasionally is an image self-sufficient” Jean Matr.

Berger lists reasons why photographs are ambiguous. There is a conflict of interest. A meeting place where interests come together.

a) The Photographer

b) The Photographed

c) The Viewer. Eyes in the future. We might look at the picture through romantic eyes. Time breads nostalgia that is nothing to do with the original photo.

d) Those who are using the Photograph.

Berger also argues that another reason for ambiguity  is its lack of content. Single photos are fragments taken out of a continuity (of real-time). The make no sense. We make sense of an image only by lending them a continuity ourselves.

“The pro photographer tries when taking a photo to choose an instant which will persuade the public viewer to lend it an appropriate past and future“. John Berger.

For Berger you can eliminate ambiguity by adding text or a caption. This provides a context. However some writers say that the text limits the photograph. Text has a kind of voice. Image has another. The picture can be manipulated through text.

–

Another Way of Telling. John Berger & Jean Mohr.

Photographs don’t lie–or do they? Another way of telling explores the tension between the photographer and the photographed, between picture and viewer, and between the filmed moment and memories it resembles.

The Spoken Image: Photography and Language. Clive Scott.

Language has always been central to the meaning and exploitation of photographic images. However, the various types and ‘styles’ of language associated with different photographic genres have been largely overlooked. This book considers the nature of photography, examining the language used in titles, captions and commentaries, particularly as they relate to documentary photography, photojournalism and fashion photography.

Context as a Determinant of Photographic Meaning. Walker, J.

Oct 16

Visual Culture. Edited by Chris Jenks.

As photographers how do we understand the nature of the world. Even though we can see the world we might not know something. If you really look at the world, can you understand what is going on?

Eugene Smith wanted to over-turn myth, and believed there was a thing out there that can be known. Chris Jenks suggests  that as you grow-up, how are you taught to see. There is a difference between seeing and knowing. To see is something you learn. What we see is a partial vision. A short-hand of the world. We learn to concentrate. Make snap judgements and limit what we see. Even our human form limits what we photograph. We don’t, for example, look down on the world.

“I can’t tell your whole story through simply a photograph. There are different levels. Different mediums to communicate” Margaret Morton.

We have a partial vision. We have coloration from our background, our own history, as does the subject. The output therefore is socially produced. It is a construction of all the actors.

–

Visual Culture. Chris Jenks.

← Older Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.