In the second issue of Accessions, the online journal of Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies, I published “Getting Closer to the Source,” a project that consists of a narrative and two videos and has to do with audiophile culture and the pursuit of realism in the reproduction of sound. An excerpt:

You’ve never heard anything like it. You hear the whole sound first. And when you catch your breath you search for words to describe the depth, the detail, the etched precision of the music. That stunning pair of three-way speakers is sending clean, undistorted sound to every corner of the room. At every frequency. At every level. Loud or soft. High or low. It doesn’t matter. The energy is constant. You’re experiencing three-dimensional imaging: vocal up front. Lead guitar two steps back and one to the left. Drums further back. The piano closer, almost at the edge of the sound. Suddenly you’re aware of a fullness in the music that you’ve heard before but never associated with recorded sound.