Magnetic Matter
Marta Zapparoli
Magnetic Matter
I’m an Italian sound artist, improviser, performer, and self-taught researcher based in Berlin since 2007. In my music making, I’m mostly working with analogue media: tape recorders and reel-to-reel tape machines and recently in addition sculptural antennas. My main object is the tape recorder and of course the tape inside of it. I think analogue phonography has led to some sort of metallurgy of sound, made sound malleable and mutable and this fits into my working method so well—with digital sound processing, this is not possible. I utilize the analogue tape recorder due to the significance of its physicality, the risk, potential, and imprecision involved; the different impact and freedom of handling which this machine can offer; the background noise, the rough sound, its chemical-physical characteristic. What I particularly love is the trait of the magnetic tape to change in quality after long-time use. The different qualities of listening, particularly in the low-end frequencies. There is a certain warmness in the bass, and the lack of digital compression allows for a more realistic sense of dynamics and space. The sound quality of the tape reflects the vision of sound, the idea of materiality that I have towards the sounds of the outside world. This machine allowed me to use my hands as a connection-interaction between a different flux of energies. When I scratch and manipulate the tape, beyond separate forms, there is a continuous development of form, and beyond variable matter, a continuous variation of matter—in short, it brings out the life proper to matter. From another perspective, a mystical one (which I believe), a kind of ghost exists that can appear in the machine as malfunctions, glitches, interruptions in the normal flow of things: something unexpected appears seemingly out of nothing and from nowhere. Those accidental moments can be positive and playful during my performance.
Marta Zapparoli is a sound artist, who is based in Berlin.