I woke up the other morn in the Rocky Mountains having spent the last
hour
or so working on what the dream first called a "Universal Translation
Device" and soon improved to "Universal Translation System." Only the
name
survived the dream.
I told Doug Carlston about this, and he set about outlining a short paper
on the subject (or something related), which we might use for a lead-up
to
the February conference on Managing Digital Contituity.
The following from Brian spells out in poignant detail how immediate as
well as temporal is the need for systemic translation. --SB
>Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 18:12:17 +0100
>To: Stewart Brand <>
>From: (Brian Eno)
>Subject: Re: HBL
>
>>I wish I could see the series in PAL. My copies in NTSC are pretty
funky.
>
>I can assure you that the PAL looks great. There's always a big loss
making
>those conversions though. I recall a day of total horror when I mounted
mny
>first video show in Europe ( - I'd made all the tapes and the early shows
>in North America). Eeverything was set up, and finally the tapes arrived
>back from the lab, now PAL. The whole thing looked absolutely
terminally
>dreadful - diluted, bluish and dead. I Went nuts and nearly pulled the
>whole show, but actually saved the day by managing to find and hire a
whole
>set of NTSC players and monitors. That was the profit from that show,
plus
>some, gone.
>
>Subsequently I always tried to make tapes in the format in which they
were
>due to be shown, or, if that wasn't possible, to treat the tapes on
>transfer - raise the colour levels etc - to try to make them as strong as
>the original.
>
>But the fact that this very simple (you'd think) problem has never been
>satisfacorily solved gives me very serious doubts about this Utopian
vision
>of a future where all technologies will be transparent and translateable.
>My experience as an artist who works with a lot of those technologies
is
>that nothing ever translates unchanged into anything else.
>
>A couple of months ago I totted up how many different storage formats
I
>have in my studio (a 'format' being defined as something that requires a
>unique playback system - ie cannot be played on another machine).
>
>The staggering answer: 28. These are:
>
>for video:
>
>VHS PAL
> NTSC
>Beta PAL
> NTSC
>U-matic PAL
> NTSC
>1" PAL
> NTSC
>8mm PAL
>Hi 8 PAL
>DV PAL
>CDROM
>
>for sound:
>
>1/4 inch stereo
>1/4inch 4track
>1/2inch stereo
>1inch 8 track
>1inch 16track
>2 inch 16 track
>2 inch 24 track
>1 inch digital 24 track
>1 inch digital 32 track
>cassette
>CD
>Minidisc
>DAT
>F1 digital
>Microcassette
>NT digital
>
>This audio list doesn't include anything about Noise reduction, which is
a
>whole other can of worms.For instance I have 2inch 24 track tapes that
have
>Dolby A noise reduction, others with Dolby SR, then there's DBX....So
that
>list needs a few added to it. Also, I haven't included any computer
storage
>formats in the list. But the fact is that if I ever want to play any of
>this stuff, I have to get the right machine to do it on. One might be
>tempted to say - why not just transfer it all to a single digital format?
>The reasons are: it would take forever, and, it wouldn't be the same
>anyway.
>
>The temptation, of course, is to say - OK - that format's finished - let's
>just chuck all those tapes away and stop bothering ourselves about it.
>
>By the way, I'm having another incomprehensible TCP problem, so this
might
>not go off for days.
>
>You Americans - you just don't realize what a difference it makes NOT
to
>live within spitting distance of Silicon Valley. I wish every internet
>Utopian could just spend four weeks trying to do it in some other part of
>the world...
>