What is there is the Greater Thing (Eighteen and a Half Minute Gap)
Polycarbonate, Custom Electronics
12” x 12” 18:35
2013

I translated the audio recording of the 18 ½ minute gap from tape 342 of the Nixon White House Tapes
into a 33RPM record. The record is made from a sheet of polycarbonate, a material that is highly transparent
to visible light. The 18 ½ minutes of erasure is broken into three segments. The first 4 ½ minutes contains a
loud buzz followed by approximately 9 minutes of soft buzz, and followed by approximately 5 minutes of
Loud Buzz again. Interspersed between some of the erasures are short un-erased segments lasting only
seconds each. In the middle of the third erasure the buzz transitions from a loud buzz to a soft buzz. In a
technical note from the 1974 Advisory Panel Report on the Tape Gap, the buzz level is attributed to unexplained
“transient noise.”

 

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