MIRRORS WITH MEMORY

2019

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Five perforated brass plates covered with silver

28,5 x 28,5 cm

In line with her work on Kodak and its inventor, this set combines two primitive methods for recording iage and sound: the polished copper plates covered with a thin layer of silver are similarto the support used for making daguerreotypes,  though no image has been recorded. Instead, the plates have been perforated in the same way as a pianola roll.

A great music lover, George Eastman, Kodak's famous foundator, owned an Aeolian mechanical organ and many such rolls. Their shape, as well as the way they are inserted into the piano through a small notch, are in all points similar to the first roll films of Kodak cameras, as if Eastman had been inspired by them to develop this invention, that revolutionized photography.

Another inovation from the late 19th century, the Pianola rolls were the first supports to be mass-

produced to facilitate the quick and easy diffusion of music. They are the forerunners of the MIDI digital files we know today. While the perforations are analog signals, it is nonetheless impossible to reconstruct any semblance of a melody based on this visual information. Unlike the daguerreotypes that were once called Mirrors with Memory – these works confront us with oblivion and the inexorable loss of understanding of data produced by recording technologies that very rapidly become obsolete.

In a final act of reappropriation, I placed a player piano in the centre of the gallery, another playful reference to the Aeolian mechanical organ found in George Eastman's home. The musical notes that emerge from it are those of the original soundtrack of the film A Place in the Sun (which tells the story of another George Eastman!), composed by Franz Waxman and retranscribed on a pianola roll from a MIDI file.