The Beauty of Imperfection Examined We Investigate ...Ourselves ?

Do you see the flaws in a recording as part of its' history, part of a unique audio artifact?

  • Yes

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    2

Michael Davitt

VIP/Donor
Nov 3, 2020
327
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I suggest a certain scrutiny is in order, to determine the nature, condition, or quality of the things we love .

What say you? Us with older ears listened through the imperfections in recorded media. And I might say were psychologically "imprinted" with acceptance of extraneous distortions, tape hiss, groove noise, inner modulations error.
Why do we ( some of us ) gravitate to the sound of old recordings.

"The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it.
The excitement of grainy film, of bleached out black and white,
is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous
for the medium assigned.
~ Brian Eno

Could it be that something too perfect is not human or in our imperfection we revolt against perfection as a soulless creation?

Kintsugi : “to join with gold” Japan’s ancient art of embracing imperfection:

People don’t purposefully shatter their cherished pieces of pottery, but that isn’t always the case in Japanese culture.
Adorning broken ceramics with a lacquer mixed with powdered gold is part of a more than 500-year-old Japanese tradition that highlights imperfections rather than hiding them. This not only teaches calm when a cherished piece of pottery breaks;
it is a reminder of the beauty of human fragility as well. It is a reminder to stay optimistic when things fall apart and to celebrate the flaws and missteps of life.

The Kintsugi technique is an extension of the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, which sees beauty in the incomplete and value in simplicity. The broken pieces’ gilded restoration usually takes up to three months, as the fragments are carefully glued together with the sap of an indigenous Japanese tree, left to dry for a few weeks and then adorned with gold running along its cracks.

In an age of mass production and quick disposal, learning to accept and celebrate scars and flaws is a powerful lesson in humanity.
This is the essence of resilience. Each of us should look for a way to cope with traumatic events in a positive way, learn from negative experiences, take the best from them and convince ourselves that exactly these experiences make each person unique, precious.

Why do we gravitate to the flaws in recordings we spent more than a century trying to remove ?

The Beauty of Degraded Media​


 
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