limited edition hardcover book with 2cds.
various artists
edition: 2500
dust to digital
2011
'… i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces brings' together a collection of vintage photographs related to music, a group of 78rpm recordings, and short excerpts from various literary sources that are contemporary with the sound and images. it is a somewhat intuitive gathering, culled from my collection of thousands of vernacular photographs related to music, sound, and listening. the subjects range from the pt barnum-esque professor mcrea – “ontario’s musical wonder” (pictured with his complex sculptural one man band contraption) – to anonymous african-american guitar players and images of early phonographs. the images range from professional portraits to ethereal, accidental, double exposures – and include a range of photographic print processes, such as tintypes, ambrotypes, cdvs, cabinet cards, real photo postcards, albumen prints, and turn-of-the-century snapshots.
the two cds display a variety of recordings, including one-off amateur recordings, regular commercial releases, and early sound effects records. there is no narrative structure to the book, but the collision of literary quotes (hamsun, lagarkvist, wordsworth, nabokov, etc.). recordings and images conspire towards a consistent mood that is anchored by the book’s title, which binds such disparate things as an early recording of an american cowboy ballad, a poem by a swedish nobel laureate, a recording of crickets created artificially, and an image of an itinerant anonymous woman sitting in a field, playing a guitar. the book also contains an essay by roden.
“a really cool unexpected book, that my wife gave me. there is great written material and extraordinary photographs. the book also has two cds of early folk, blues and country.it is by a small press, dust-to-digital.”
— richard gere, books i’m reading, in usa weekend magazine
"it’s just this incredible collection of photographs from the 1800s and early 1900s of musicians. and then the two cds that come with it are recordings of 78s. some of them are even archival, kind of retrievals of sound effects for movies. like there’s this one of wind from the ’30s, just really an incredible collection."
— jeff tweedy, wilco
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steve roden Pasadena, California
steve roden is a visual & sound artist from los angeles,
who pioneered the lowercase style of music; where quiet,
usually unheard, sounds are amplified to form complex and rich soundscapes.
his work includes painting, drawing, sculpture, film/video, sound installation, text and performance.
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