$IGNAL$ 029: HOW FAR FROM THE ORIGINAL?
Someone sends a reference. Everyone agrees it is good. Nobody agrees which part matters.
A new synthesizer makes that ambiguity adjustable. An artist-designed guitar and a New York exhibition offer two other ways to think about what survives a change of form.
MATCH / IMAGINE
Native Instruments’ Massive XL turns imported audio into editable synth presets. Its Match/Imagine slider adjusts how closely the results follow the source.
The interesting creative proposition is the distance between recognition and departure. A reference becomes material you can play, alter and judge.
That makes a familiar briefing problem visible: are we preserving a texture, a structure, a feeling or simply a resemblance?
Source: Massive XL product and controls.
A METHOD YOU CAN PICK UP
Fender’s new Kim Gordon Jazzmaster includes a high-output bridge humbucker alongside its Jazzmaster neck pickup.
An artist collaboration becomes more interesting when you can locate its decisions in the object. Gordon’s use of texture and dissonance gives this one a useful listening test: what does the instrument invite a player to do?
The name starts the conversation. The sound has to continue it.
Source: Fender’s Kim Gordon announcement.
AFTER THE CAVE
JR’s Paris intervention ended in June. Its preparatory sketches and archival photographs now appear at Perrotin New York in In the Making: La Caverne du Pont Neuf, through December 19.
The temporary work acquires another form. Visitors encounter evidence of its construction and completion, presented as works themselves.
For anyone commissioning something ephemeral, that suggests a planning question: which materials could carry a meaningful second chapter?
Source: Perrotin exhibition.
THE SIGNAL
References carry several kinds of information at once. A faithful silhouette can lose the behavior. A recognizable sound can lose the surprise.
Before approving the translation, specify what must remain, what may change and who will judge it.
“Like this” leaves too much unsaid.
SEND US THE PROBLEM.
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