Rebecca Gordon

 

click image to launch slideshow

 

Idle Behavior 

 

“It is more important to affirm the least sincere;
the clouds get enough attention as it is, and even they continue to pass.” 

                                                                     —Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency (1957)

 

Throughout the 1990’s, the consumer electronics company Aiwa produced a series of home stereo systems that featured on their digital LED screens a default setting consisting of a flashing sequence displaying the capabilities of the stereo. These simple animations began automatically when the stereo was turned off, continuing indefinitely with a looping series of changing words, numbers, symbols, and equalizer bars—what a friend who works in the electronics industry described to me as a test pattern, or idle behavior. I owned one of these stereos during as a teenager, and had long thrown it away and forgotten about it until a couple of years ago, when I developed a curious fascination with these stereos and their screen saver capabilities, purchasing one after another off Craigslist and piling them up in my studio.

When I plugged the first one in and saw the display I was, unexpectedly, overwhelmed by the feeling of being a younger and far-off version of myself, in my room in my parent’s house, rife with undirected angst and passions and sadness. Like Proust's madeleine, this stream of meaningless digital faux-data was in some way inextricably linked to the mood and perspective of those long ago moments. As I reflected on the emotional significance of this random scrolling image, I discovered that quite a few other people I spoke with had similar experiences with their Aiwas; that it was, for them, similarly imbued with the feeling and meaning of a time long passed. After years of cohabitation with this object, its useless and non-sensical digital data-stream became intimately familiar; a poetic object suited to its moment in the digital age. You are there again: the only light in your pitch black bedroom, gazing at it in the dark while your parents scream at each other in the hall, or after the first time you masturbated, or were dumped by your first love, or came to understand something very real and true about yourself, laying there alone and awake in bed watching the flashing lights.   —RG