Kodascoper by Alvord Loop
The steady machine purr of a vintage desktop film projector is a wonderful sensation to hear. Forget about watching a film, just listen to the gentle clicks and steady whirl that make you feel as if you are being smoothly transported to a new dimension. The pulse is steady but mild oscillations cause a soft swerving. The sound is shifting, the film is flapping, constant but never quite the same. Then, if you rewind, you get on the speed rail. The film is swiftly moving backward but the sound is shooting forward. The metal reels blur and their velocity builds to an unhinged whir as if the reels might fly off into the atmosphere. In any mode, the film projector provides a captivating sonic ride.
I picked up one of these projectors, a 1950's Kodak Kodascope 16mm film projector, recorded the machine in action from many different angles and then used it as the basis for these two compositions.
Kodascoper takes the basic sound and feel of the projector and expands on the textures to find new avenues of acoustic sensations. I cut up the original sounds, finding small and micro bits to rebuild into new loops and passages that fuse together and evolve throughout the piece.
Film Loop transforms the churning rhythm of the rewinding reels into a machine ambient piece, softening the mechanics yet still driving forward and forward and forward.
Working under the name Alvord Loop, Lawrence Dolton creates sound compositions to expand the possibilities of how we listen to the world around us.