Elision from Smithsonian Treasures by Keira Simmons

Piece based on Thomas Alva Edison from the National Portrait Gallery (1890).

"In this piece I was interested in exploring Edison’s early wax cylinder phonograph recordings, as depicted in the painting. As the first recording technology designed to be listened back to, these wax cylinders arguably begin the trajectory that leads us here, to the proliferation of public access to audio recording, to skype calls, to hearing loved ones and colleagues over distance, whether a street or an ocean away. In the painting of Edison, I find the broken cylinder in the foreground particularly evocative of a continued struggle with the inbuilt fragility and unreliability of recording mediums through history, and a reminder of our human persistence to have our voices heard. The two recordings most decipherable in the piece are both Edison: the first is the earliest known recording of his voice (Around The World On A Phonograph, 1888), and the second is the first public recording he made of his own voice (Let Us Not Forget, 1919). The drone texture in the first half of the piece is a sample from the first, when he says ‘goodbye’, and the orchestral drone is the introduction to “It’s a long way to Tipperary” (both stretched ~60x using PaulXStretch). All cylinder recordings are courtesy of the USCB Cylinder Audio Archive (I highly recommend having a listen around that site). Other samples throughout the piece are from my own malfunctioning audio equipment. "

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