compression codecs

The ever brilliant Things Magazine refers us to a ghostly composition called moDernisT created by Ryan Maguire from the sounds lost to the lossy compression of converting the Susan Vega track Tom’s Diner into mp3 format, the rhythmic tone poem famously (previously here and here) used as the in studio control for the engineers behind the digitisation to catch themselves and recalibrate if they’d gone too far sacrificing fidelity for the sake of disc-space. Likewise, the accompanying video created by Takahiro Suzuki contains only remnants salvaged from the cutting room floor after creating the mp4. I am waiting at the counter for the man to pour the coffee…