Denoising Field Recordings
Denoising Field Recordings documents an early attempt at using denoising-techniques in a creative and compositional manner. Instead of utilising noise-reduction-algorithms for their intended purpose (the restoration of damaged audio signals), these processes are applied to various field recordings of trains, streets, swimminghalls and public transport.
Due to the fact that these recordings consist entirely of noises this operation transforms the originals into an uncanny hybrid of newly introduced processing artefacts, occasional silence and sporadically audible traces of the original field recordings.
What kind of sound-aesthetics can emerge while denoising field recordings? Which audible parameters are able to resist this »audio-erasement-process«? How are these traces comparable to the visual remanences of Robert Rauschenberg’s erasure of a de Kooning drawing?
Denoising Field Recordings is released as a limited edition of see-through 12” vinyl with an intruiging white-on-white cover designed by Hans Renzler. The digital version is available exlusively at zero-inch
Until recently I was aware of the ‘denoiser’ only as an audio restoration tool to remove the noise from historical recordings or to filter out cracks on old vinyl. [...] But then I got to know the young Austrian musician, DJ and denoising-fetishist Richard Eigner. Since then my ears have been full. Of almost nothing!
For Eigner had the wonderful idea of using the technical potential of such denoising tools as the plug-in Waves X-Noise or the hardware Cedar DNS 1000 as an artistic means of of deconstruction. „What is left of extreme noise music, for example“, the conceptual artist in him wondered, „if I extremely denoise it? In an ideal case: silence?« Fritz Ostermayer (Spike #21)
previous next
