CPS1 serial number 002 just celebrated its third birthday at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where it lives at their Cylinder Audio Archive – part of the Special Collections at UCSB’s Davidson Library.
About six months after CPS1 arrived, Stewart Engart – a third-year Ph.D. Candidate in Musical Composition – joined the Archive as Cylinder Audio Engineer. Since then, he has transferred over 2,000 cylinders on CPS1 using our custom cartridges. He is likely the most experienced end user of our technologies.
Stewart’s a great guy and, as you will see, he’s doing interesting things, too. His work with CPS1 was recently featured on UCSB’s library website. The posting includes two videos. What stands out is his affection for these early recordings, for the cylinder format and for our technology.
https://www.library.ucsb.edu/news/student-spotlight-digitizing-cylinder-audio-archive
Notice Stewart’s comments about the use of cylinder audio – by himself as well as other modern musicians – as content in contemporary music compositions. It’s a similar approach to artists who create installations from discarded materials.
What would Edward Issler make of all this? What would he make of Stewart?