Underexposed: Cory Allen – Shutter Echo
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As the perfection of the digital age continues to tighten its grip on the organic quality of analog, I felt a need to gently take a few steps back from the stringent digital world in order to find balance. Sometime over the last two years, my interest shifted to the subtleties of the analog bandwidth, and more specifically, the artifacts or errors that occur in the analog medium as a source.
For the audio portion of this exhibition, I focused on the beauty of degraded analog sources. Along with my trusted sonic tool box of Fender Rhodes, Moog Voyager and electric guitar, I used bad cable grounding signals, poor antenna connections, shoddy field recordings and blank spots on aged vinyl records as sources for sonic analog errors. These errors are visually expressed by photos I shot with my modified Holga camera. These cameras are known for their light leaks and other problems due to cheap construction and a plastic body.
On a sunny day in Austin, I took my Holga to a state park and snapped many shots, most of them exposed 2 or 3 times each. As I was working my way through some large rocks and untamed trees, my Holga slipped off my neck and hit the earth. When the camera hit, the back flew off, and the film flew out. I thought for sure my film was ruined. After the film was blindly reloaded by feel in a black bag (to be kept away from sunlight), I started over with the same roll of 35mm. The film was off track, but I kept shooting, even though I could feel the tension in the film winder. I shot over the previously taken pictures, continuing with multiple exposures. After developing, I was delighted to see the film was not only salvaged, but had turned into beautifully unique and colorful images.
The sounds in the piece exist in the same spirit as the light leaks and lens problems of the Holga photos. Fuzzy and crackling lo-fi sounds float around the perimeter of the music to represent a kind of audio vignette. In other places, pure tones shine through as a light leak would imprint its signature on undeveloped film. With these works, my intent is to find a balance between the living nature of analog and the magic perfection of digital, all the while imprinting the most fundamental aesthetic of all; the human spirit. – Cory Allen
First of all I would like to say I enjoyed the music, imagery and thought process of this project. The chance and accidental aspect of the recording of sound and images adds to the mystery of the piece. People have put so much effort, resources, study etc. into the development of devices to capture the highest quality visuals and sound, it seems a retrograde step to use and celebrate the faults and errors of inferior and damaged tools. Congrats on the finished product..
Fantastic! I am really loving this “Underexposed” series.