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decay



Ok, I can't stand this thread any longer, so I'm going to introduce a new
topic.  Stefan Mathieu's "Wurmloch Variationen" has turned out to be one of
my absolute favorite albums this year, both on a purely visceral/listening
level, and on a more abstracted/theoretical level.  In terms of the latter,
what intrigues me is the way that it plays with the idea of decay - dubbing
the original piece over and over and over again, then presenting various
stages of this "decay."  One of my questions (and apologies if you feel put
on the spot, Stefan, since I know you're on the list):  is this entirely a
digital process?  I'd presume that if you dubbed from tape to tape, over and
over, you'd wind up with a pretty obvious decay of the source material,
swallowed gradually by tape hiss.  But does digital reproduction really work
the same way, or is there another process at work in this piece?

I guess the second part of my question:  who else has explored this idea
(aside from Lucier's "I am sitting in a room" - is this in print, by the
way? I can't track it down)?

And finally, can anyone point me to any reliable statistics on digital
decay?  I've heard various theories that digital is not an archival medium,
by any stretch of the imagination.  What happens when the digital decays?
Do the bits simply break down?  Will digital media, even if not *physically*
damaged (eg, if a CD, not scratched), actually become corrupted over time?

Maybe this can offer a fresh perspective on the whole problem of "copying,"
now that one thread seems to have beaten to death.

Thanks,
Phil