Network Atlas by Geza Perneczky - Ruud Janssen

421project I was well practiced in the techniques of recording, mixing, editing andcopying. In the late seventies the cassette recorder was becoming more generallyaffordable, and the audio compact cassette was, and still is, standard globally. Ihad received a few cassettes from mail-artists in the UK (Paul Carter), the USA(Peter → Frank) and Brazil (Leonard Frank → Dutch) and had recorded a coupleof sound projects with Anna → Banana and Bill → Gaglione...You mention that in 1983 started using the computer in your workforaudio...Actually I didn't use the computer in audio mode until I bought the AcornBBC model B which had the most sophisticated sounding voice synthesizer... It isinteresting to note that the computer has stilll not made any significant impact onmail-art and is still very much an under-used tool......Only few mail--artists in Europe have an E-mail address. You and meare a few of them. What do you think that this digital communication will bringto the creative people?Until the bottle-neck traffic jams on the access routes to the digital highwayare cleared by increasing the number of nodes and lines to the user, the wholeconcept of E-network and E-mail is a joke... now I have a fax/modem and free fromsubscriptions, at least for the time being lost it entirely. That is what is typical ofthe electronic communication-forms, especially E-mail and internet. The thingsI see on my screen I mostly want to have on paper too. This digital format seemssometimes so unreal to me. Guy → Bleus soon will start his electronic AdministrationCenter. Can art really be put into the bits and bytes, or shall it always bethe sea of possibilities between the zero and one?...(Ruud → Janssen: The Mail-Interview with Rod Summers. A/5, phc., 8 p.TAM Publs., Tilburg, 1994)«...“Why audio art?“ Sometimes I ask myself the same question! Museums andgalleries are generally conceived of as being quiet environments, like churchesand other places of worship. Cough if you dare, it'll echo for a week! There hasbeen a constant audio art production/evolution since at least the introduction ofrecording techniques, sound poetry has a much longer history. Radio Spain 2 hasheld an annual festival of“Ars Sonora“ for the past several years and made regularbroadcasts of audio arts before that. There would appear to be a growing interestin audio as art. (...)Sound, and its absence, have always fascinated me. I grew up into earthlyawareness in the environment of a piano being played, poetry being read aloud,the BBC on the radio and the absolute silence of English countryside nights.I received my first eletric shock from a dismantled radio, power of the medium.We identify our friends by the sounds of their voices almost as quickly as wewould recognise them visually. Poetry has always employed voice articulation toemphase drama.AUDIO CASSETTE EDITIONS: I produce audio works on tape specificallyto copy onto cassette in editions of 100 to 150 real-time copies. 95% of thecassettes are sent out by mail to archives and contacts worldwide as part of myinput into the Mail Art Network. Extracts and completes works from thesecassettes have been played on many local and national radio stations in Europeand America.VEC: stands for Visual, Experimental and Concrete, which describes myactivity in poetry.THE VEC AUDIO EXCHANGE PROJECT (1978-1983): Artists activein the international mail art network were invited to send their audio works forinclusion on regulary published cassettes. The published cassettes were onlyavailable in exchange for new audio works. 180 artists from 21 countries participated.16 (real-time copies from half-track reel-toreel mamster tape) cassetteswere produced in an edition of 150.»(Rod Summers: VEC Hark 14. In: Stephen → Perkins: Assembling