Loop_reprise is an mp3 player that plays different versions of a single well known song. The project cross-links a number of old and new cultural tendencies. From the classical avant-garde, it acknowledges the history of appropriation of the vernacular (Duchamp etc.), and the use of the repetitious unit as a formal device (minimalism), and from digital multimedia it connects the use of sampling to an older tradition of the 'cover version' from popular music. Rather than (interactively) allowing users to remix or re-author sound samples, the project takes a number of different versions of the same song and plays them sequentially as a series of repetitive units.

 

By looping the same song through its different manifestations, the project enables us to experience the individual songs anew as a singular entity; a collection of individuated/granular parts experienced as whole.

2001