Tapeloping : 30th Anniversary radio stream
A generative radio stream for Art's Birthday 2018.
by Absolute Value of Noise and everyone who sent in sounds (credits below).

Imagine a collection of 30 tapeloops, each stretched down the hallway for 30 feet. They wrap around microphone stands, door knobs, and coat racks. There are moments of silence on each loop, and moments of extreme noise. Each sound has been sent from afar by a different artist. Some sounds are abstract, some are carefully composed, some are made hastily with a cheap microphone and recorder. The loops spin and combine in different ways, creating an endless stream of lo-fi + hi-fi + highly-considered + lighty-considered noises.

Tapeloping - recording of the radio stream from January 2018.

Absolute Value of Noise is both my artist-alias and the name of the first radio-art show I did on CITR FM in Vancouver, starting in January 1988. When I first started the radio show, people would drop by with cassette tapes and noise-makers of various types. Everything would make it into the mix in some way. GX Jupitter-Larsen would drop by with cassettes from around the world - noiseart releases plus bits and pieces of sound that people had sent him to use on New Sounds Gallery on co-op radio. The show was always energetic and eclectic - often challenging to listen to - but it never garnered any hate mail. I think many people used it as a time to turn off their radios for a few hours on a Friday afternoon, and others would phone in to request ridiculous sounds that were impossible to make in the studio.

This 30th Anniversary stream "tapeloping" works with the idea of people dropping by with their sounds. Everything is distressed/mutated/remixed and recombined but in a way that keeps some sense of its original form. I like the idea that in 2018 the tape loop has moved on and become a new device that runs quickly over long distances from one side of the world to the other. Thus it is a tape-lope.

The sounds in the stream are from people that I've collaborated with or who've inspired me over the years. I've been lucky enough to meet and work with a lot of amazing people, and here are a few of them - spanning the years from 1988 to the end of 2017.

Deanne Achong, Jim Andrews, Sean Arden, Steve Bates, Gívan Belá, Ian Birse, John Brennan, Hank Bull, Brian Charles (a ghost in the machine), Don Chow, Andrea Cserenyi (from the archives), DinahBird, Elisa Ferrari, David Floren, Anna Friz, Ken Gregory, Steve Heimbecker, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Eileen Kage, Laura Kavanaugh, Gene Kosowan, Sally Ann McIntyre, Brady Marks, Faith Moosang, Bill Mullan, Jem Noble + Milo Piccini Noble, Roberto Paci Dalò, Anthony Roberts, Matt Rogalsky, Adam Sloan + Liam Sloan, Maia Urstad, Gregory Whitehead, Elisabeth Zimmermann.

Noise Speak'r cover art, 1991.

absolutevalueofnoise.ca   |   audio available on bandcamp