Fidelity—scratch, static, decay

Fidelity—scratch, static, decay

Earlid | Fidelity—scratch, static, decay, winter 2019

Body and mind and soul, we fall victim to time, place and the wind blowing upon our faces. Four artists collect sounds out of the ether, build them out of nothingness, a fidelity to the thin air itself. Their approaches to signals, to the poetics navigating the ether, dilate and swell.

Fidelity threads a tapestry among them.

In transmission, there’s a trust in the body and the voice.

A radio wave never decays; however, its radio towers may tumble. There’s a kind of infidelity, too, among these artists—of not recording—flouting the urge to document in today’s archive culture. There’s a keen reaching back towards live and lo-fi radio or to shortwave or to performance or to staticky recordings that defies the currency of the everyday ‘museum’ of stuff we call up online and listen to.

Amanda Dawn Christie has made a requiem with newly built cello and theremin.

Myke Dodge Weiskopf blurs sonic mixes in the vanishing points of non-urban geographies.

Sherre DeLys melds interviews of Helen Keller, the static of King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, and eerie theremin recordings.

Mollye Bendell builds magic into radio antennas meant to be touched by the wind.

Listen to the fidelity of their artistry. Eavesdrop in on their conversations.