Green Indonesia

We are now used to having our favourite vinyl albums being re-released as CDs and MP3s. I still find it somewhat miraculous that what you’re reading and I’m listening to can all be stored on a microchip smaller than my bitten finger nails.

Of course, much of what you read in blogs and what we listen to here is pirated and a lot of fuss is made about this. But what if there isn’t a choice?

Kevin Kelly is investigating an interesting use of an unexpected material.

During the late 1930s and early 1940s the prevalent sound recording apparatus was the wax disk cutter. As a consequence of the lack of materials in the war-time economy, some inventive sound hunters made their own experiments with new materials within their reach.

Later, in the USSR and Eastern Europe in the 1950s underground night spots would play music pirated from the west. The only media they had were recordings etched into discarded X-ray film.

This material was both plentiful and cheap, and millions of duplications of Western and Soviet groups were made and distributed by an underground roentgenizdat, or x-ray press, which is akin to the samizdat that was the notorious tradition of self-publication among banned writers in the USSR.

The music lived on. Dem bones, dem bones, dem x-rayed bones ……

Green Indonesia would be interested to learn of any inventive uses of otherwise discarded materials seen here. Photographs would be appreciated.