graceful degradation

by asher tuil

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	1.	a dim lamp, which emits more shadow than light 21:55
	2.	a small table of dark wood which has long since fallen apart 20:20
	3.	the patches of imperfect blue where it still lingers 20:47
	4.	untitled #287 11:48
	5.	untitled #291 13:10
	6.	untitled #296 12:18
	7.	untitled #303 12:40
	8.	untitled #305 12:45
	9.	untitled #311 12:11

about

These works started their lives as recordings of my piano onto an old, beat up tape using an old tape recorder. the piano I bought on the street in brooklyn for seventy five dollars. I was told it had been the piano in a local bar and was in quite a state of disrepair. over the year or so that I lived in my apartment I grew quite attached to the black spinet with gold stickers spelling "steinwa" on its face. the cassette I found while cleaning out old offices in queens. it was among an abandoned collection of cassettes that someone left behind. I adopted them, giving them new life by layering field recordings and piano over led zeppelin and the police which i found on them. the tape recorder I found in a storeroom at work. no one cared when I took it home and it always sat next to the piano with a cassette ready.
One of the cassettes I ended up using had been recorded onto so many times that it became worn out and never played back my recordings the same way. after working with this cassette for a while I had filled it up, even recording over some of my own recordings. at this point I started creating compositions using this material, with samples of various lengths looped and played against each other, yielding unexpected results.
I came across the concept of graceful degradation while reading a book by richard restak. I realized that the idea fit in very well with the work I was doing. memories are recorded in our brains and surface whenever they are triggered; but each memory is blurred through the process of recollection. This blurring process occurs as memories are recalled and observed in the present, altering the original version. There are many references to this concept within the compositional process and final results, and perhaps more which I haven't discovered. The first layer I encountered was within the cassette. Each time I played a section of the tape the sounds were altered and placed in a new context. The next layer was in the studio working with the sounds, sampling sections of the tape and creating the compositions. as each sample plays its part in the piece, it is altered through its relationship with the sounds of the other samples. Another layer exists while listening, as each person develops an individual relationship with the piece, and the sounds are placed in the context of their experience.

tracks 2,3 and 8 originally released by conv
thanks to m.a. tolosa

credits

released June 30, 2019

summer of 2005
brooklyn, ny

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about

asher tuil Providence, Rhode Island

asher tuil is an artist living and working in wanskuck, providence, ri. for over twenty years asher has worked with recorded sounds as his primary medium. location recordings, electronic synthesis, found sounds and a variety of other sources are used in his compositions to create a rich and dynamically varied body of work which examines these materials extensively. ... more

discography

Opus

Apr 2024
for steve roden

Jan 2024
suite

Nov 2023
étude

Aug 2023

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