The Hand in the Signal — Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

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TEE-ART-RB-ORA-01-M-BK T-Shirt

Piece

The Hand in the Signal Oversized Drop-Shoulder T-Shirt

$ 2,345.00

Description

From 1959 Oram developed Oramics, a machine that read drawings on 35 mm film and turned them into sound: the hand goes directly into the signal. The print is that stroke as the machine reads it.

A Author

Daphne Oram

B Subject

Graphic Synthesis

C Aesthetic

Diagram · Typographic

Exploration

Oram joined the BBC at eighteen, as a technician, having turned down a place to study music because the war made knowing how to run equipment more useful. She spent her nights in the empty studio experimenting with tape.

She founded the Radiophonic Workshop and left eleven months later, because the corporation wanted sound effects for programmes and she wanted to compose.

Alone, in a converted mill in Kent, she built Oramics: a machine on which you draw by hand on strips of 35 mm film and a reader turns the stroke into sound. The wave shape, the volume, the pitch and the vibrato are drawn. There is no keyboard and no performer.

She funded it with advertising commissions and her own savings, and never received sustained support.

Putting the hand straight into the signal, with no instrument in between, is what anyone does today on a screen dragging a curve.

Details