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Janek Schaefer: performances and exhibit



Hi all.
Anybody in the London or Bristol areas of the UK might be interested to know
that I'm performing and exhibiting this week. Firstly I'm performing at the
Rough Trade 25th anniversary concert on wednesday night at Cargo on
Rivington St, London, and also at a Fat Cat night at The Cube in Bristol on
Friday night.
Also for a month from friday I'm exhibiting my new 'Twin' turntable [with
two arms, micro vari-speed, dual direction] built for my new two track, one
sided 'Eccentric/Concentric' infinite play LP for the exhibition 'The
Rumble' at The Royal Society of British Sculptors in Old Brompton Rd,
London. More in depth details on this below. If you want to say hello I'll
see you there.
Thanks
Janek Schaefer
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Extract from the exhibition catalogue. Curated by Joe Banks [Disinformation]
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Nothing bears testament to the efficiency and importance of the spiral as a
framework for encoding information more than its importance in the
architecture of DNA, but spiral formations can be distributed horizontally
(across flat planes) as well as vertically too. Examples include traditional
vinyl records, revolving magnetic storage media, and the various forms of
laser-disc such as CD, CD-R, DVD and Minidisc formats etc.

Architect Janek Schaefer's 'Wow' 7" takes an amalgam of sinusoidal sweep
signals (audible as developing undulating tones) and uses innovative
'eccentric' cutting techniques to magnify a technical error produced by
asymmetries in records when played on a turntable. The result of Janek's
experimentation here is a record whose off-centre tracking causes the tone
arm of the record player to move from side to side creating fluctuation in
the playing speed as it revolves, distortions onomatopoeically referred to
as 'wow'. This results in a unique hybrid artefact, part record, part
sculpture, part self-activating physical remix and also part musical
instrument. Writing in The Wire magazine (November 2000) Paul Sullivan
described Janek's 7" as magnifying the 'wobbling sound that so many
turntable manufacturers have spent years trying to eliminate', and in the
same magazine Chris Sharp described this work as a 'playful reminder that
music, for all its ineffability, is at base just a specialised branch of
physics'.

Janek's 'Eccentric / Concentric LP' (AudiOh 08) takes this same process one
stage further. The vinyl disc is cut with two identical tracks each
containing an identical continuous tone which both end in locked-grooves
[infinitely repeating circular loops]. In this case the inner groove is cut
and plays normally while the outer is cut asymmetrically on the same
surface. These are played back simultaneously on his purpose built 'Twin
Turntable'.

"During the cutting stage of each record I made a second hole in the lacquer
and cut the eccentric tracks around these new centres. This meant that when
it came to press the discs using the initial / original centre holes the
actual sound is positioned off-centre on the discs, which as described,
forces the music to physically fluctuate and deviate from the original
recording".
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About the exhibition 'The Rumble'

An exhibition on the theme of morphology at the Royal Society of British
Sculptors, March 2001, featuring Georgina Brett, Adam Lowe and Bob Shannon;
Ravi Deepres; Disinformation; Dr. Michael Green; ECM:323; Aardman
Animations; Rob Mullender; Janek Schaefer; and James Spiring.

March 2nd to 27th 2001 at The Royal Society of British Sculptors, Dora
House, 108 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3RA. Information 020 7373 8615.
Private view March 1st. Admission free.

Particular emphasis will be given to exhibits which express relationships
between sine-waves, circles, spirals, spheres, toroidal, trefoil and helical
signals, motion, sounds and forms (in ascending order of geometric
complexity) ? in ways which suggest and explore aspects of aesthetics,
architectural practice, biological research, musical and philosophical
harmony
and chemical modelling. The exhibition also explores projective,
shape-forming aspects of cognitive psychology.

Exhibits include "Morph" by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, "Icosahedral
Shell from Twenty Subunits with 3-Fold Cyclic Symmetry" and "Double Helix"
by Michael Green, "Etusta, Leanabte, Heteblamedeus" by Georgina Brett, Adam
Lowe and Bob Shannon, "Molymod Molecular Model of Carbon-60
Buckminsterfullerene" and "Molymod Molecular Model of a Hypothetical
Silicon-60 Carbon-60 Cluster" by Philip Spiring, "Take Ye and Eat" by
Georgina Brett, "Free Jazz" by Rob Mullender, "Wow" and "Concentric /
Eccentric LP" by Janek Schaefer, "Phase" and "Test Site Number 2" by
ECM:323, "Anthropomorphic Transformation of an Atmospheric Nuclear Test" and
"The Analysis of Beauty" by Disinformation, untitled works by Ravi Deepres
and Georgina Brett.
--Boundary_(ID_XgNHbHh0FXjxvMqnNu3rUA)
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