Felix Kubin

After its introduction to the public 40 years ago, the compact cassette (aka audio cassette or cassette tape) quickly became the most popular medium for copying music, allowing consumers to record directly from radio or record player to tape. soon the record industry started to worry about a decline in record sales, which led to the notorious "home taping is killing music" campaign. as a side effect, the medium has produced an independent and distinctive underground music scene in the early 1980s. since the introduction of recordable cds and mp3s the importance of the compact cassette has decreased continuously. in the beginning of 2012 its industrial production was put to an end. Felix Kubin's composition "chromdioxidgedächtnis" (chromium dioxide memory) investigates the characteristics of magnetic recordings, their saturations, fluctuations, strains and crosstalk effects. these shortcomings - which are swept away completely from today's digital data transmission - are similar to the specter of human memory: they interpret the recording rather than representing it, thus serving as a metaphor of perception. most of the sound material in this composition is gathered from felix' own crammed archives. commissioned by the deutscher musikrat (german music council), "chromdioxidgedächtnis" will be released in their series "edition elektronik" as a boxset containing a cd, a cassette tape and an extensive booklet.