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Binatone Galaxy

Binatone Galaxy is a sound installation consisting of a multitude of cassette recorders installed as a constellation on the gallery walls. Each machine is fitted with a custom-built tape which amplifies it’s own internal mechanics, making the machines the source of the audio as well as its mediator, allowing them to speak their own language rather than reproducing the voices of others.

The work looks on the obsolescence of these machines as dictaphones as an opportunity to explore their potential without prioritising functionality. Replacing the prerecorded content of each tape with a microphone gives us the chance to listen instead to the rhythmic and resonant properties of these once ubiquitous plastic shells. The framework within which a generation of listeners purchased their favourite albums is brought to the centre revealing the internal acoustics of the medium itself.

Binatone Galaxy was initially shown at Campbell Works, London in October 2011. It has since been exhibited in Creative Machines / Minimal Sculptures at TROVE, Birmingham; Body Controlled #1 at L.E.A.P. in Berlin; a solo show at Lydgalleriet, Bergen; and Urban Sounds at Haus der Electronische Künste, Basel. Between March 2012 and January 2013 the work was installed in the ZKM Centre for Art & Media in Karlsruhe as part of Sound Art: Klang als Medium der Kunst and was subsequently purchased for the ZKM’s permanent collection.

The installation was included in a report on the BBC Culture Show and has been reviewed by The Wire magazine and featured in Musicworks as well as numerous online blogs. A CD release documenting various auditory perspectives on the work has been published by Italian label Senufo Editions and was included in The Wire’s review of the year for 2012.