Launched from the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the ''Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine'' utilized the

audio cassette The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Otten ...

medium to distribute no wave

downtown music Downtown music is a subdivision of American music, closely related to experimental music, which developed in downtown Manhattan in the 1960s. History The scene the term describes began in 1960, when Yoko Ono, one of the early Fluxus artists, o ...

and audio art and was in activity for the ten years of 1983–1993.

The Tellus Project

Tellus publishers and executive editors –

visual artist The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts al ...

and

noise music Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise within a musical context. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical ...

composer

Joseph Nechvatal Joseph Nechvatal (born January 15, 1951) is an American post-conceptual digital artist and Aesthetics, art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses. Life and work ...

; former curator-director of the

Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia The Institute of Contemporary Art or ICA is a contemporary art museum in Philadelphia. The museum is associated with the University of Pennsylvania, and is located on its campus. The Institute is one of the country's leading museums dedicated to e ...

and current curator-director of The

Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area. List of Jewish museums Notable Jewish museums include: *Albania ** Solomon Museum, Berat *Australia ** Jewish Mu ...

Claudia Gould Claudia Gould is an art curator and the Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director of The Jewish Museum in New York City. Life and work Claudia Gould was born and raised near New Haven, Connecticut. She had a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother. She ...

; and

new music New music may refer to: Musical styles and movements Pre-20th century * Ars nova, musical style in 14th-century France and the Low Countries * '' Le nuove musiche'', collection of monody by Giulio Caccini * New German School, music style in late 1 ...

composer and director of

Harvestworks Harvestworks is a not-for-profit arts organization located in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by artists supporting the creation and presentation of art works achieved through the use of new technologies. The Harvestworks TEAM Lab (Technology ...

, Carol Parkinson – conceived of the

compact cassette The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...

medium as a no wave

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

-inspired media art form in itself. Nechvatal and Parkinson had met in the mid-1970s and performed in a

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

minimal art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or co ...

dance trio with Cid Collins influenced by the post-

Merce Cunningham Mercier Philip "Merce" Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of American modern dance for more than 50 years. He frequently collaborated with artists of other discipl ...

postmodern dance/choreography of

Deborah Hay Deborah Hay (born 1941 in Brooklyn, New York) is a choreographer, dancer, dance theorist, and author working in the field of experimental postmodern dance. She is one of the original founders of the Judson Dance Theater. Hay's signature slow and ...

(with whom they studied in 1977) and Carolee Schneemann (with whom they toured Europe in 1978). In 1979, Nechvatal, Collins and Parkinson had organized the five night ''Public Arts International/Free Speech''

festival in May at 75 Warren Street in Manhattan and Nechvatal and Parkinson continued to see each other in the

art music Art music (alternatively called classical music, cultivated music, serious music, and canonic music) is music considered to be of high phonoaesthetic value. It typically implies advanced structural and theoretical considerationsJacques Siron, ...

milieu of the

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

minimal music Minimal music (also called minimalism)"Minimalism in music has been defined as an aesthetic, a style, and a technique, each of which has been a suitable description of the term at certain points in the development of minimal music. However, two o ...

scene, as they worked for the

Dia Art Foundation Dia Art Foundation is a nonprofit organization that initiates, supports, presents, and preserves art projects. It was established in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, the daughter of Houston arts patron Dominique de Menil and an heiress to the Schlumb ...

as archivist (Nechvatal) and assistant (Parkinson) to

La Monte Young La Monte Thornton Young (born October 14, 1935) is an American composer, musician, and performance artist recognized as one of the first American minimalist composers and a central figure in Fluxus and post-war avant-garde music. He is best kno ...

. Nechvatal, who originated the concept of the project, chose the name Tellus from

Tellus Mater In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Tellus Mater or Terra Mater ("Mother Earth") is the personification of the Earth. Although Tellus and Terra are hardly distinguishable during the Imperial era, ''Tellus'' was the name of the original ea ...

, the Roman earth goddess of fecundity. In 2007, French music blogger Continuo and Stephen McLaughlin created an online

mp3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

archive of all of the Tellus tracks and accessibly archived them at

Ubuweb UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. Philosop ...

.
A ''Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine'' Special

Dublab dublab is a non-profit music public broadcasting internet radio station based in Los Angeles. They have also been involved with art exhibition, film projects, event production, and record releases. These Shows are archived and downloadable on the ...

Broadcast on Thursday, June 24, 2021

Influence

*''Ego Masher'' (1983) 07:05 by

- from ''Tellus #1'' - has been anthologized on the CD '' An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music #6''. *Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine has been mentioned as an inspiration to the opening of the Sound Art Museum in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

(2007). *An exhibition was held at Printed Matter, Inc. in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

devoted to current American cassette culture entitled ''Leaderless: Underground Cassette Culture Now'' (May 12–26, 2007) that referred to the influence of Tellus. *In 2011, selections from early Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine recordings were included in

MoMA Moma may refer to: People * Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist * Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician * Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher Places ; Ang ...

's exhibition ''Looking at Music 3.0''. *In September 2011, Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine was the sole subject of a Kontra Bass (BSSX) internet radio broadcast originating in Serbia. *In February 2011, issues of

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...

(with images of covers) and

ARTnews ''ARTnews'' is an American visual-arts magazine, based in New York City. It covers art from ancient to contemporary times. ARTnews is the oldest and most widely distributed art magazine in the world. It has a readership of 180,000 in 124 countri ...

covered Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine. *In 2013, Devon Maloney, at

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...

Magazine, reports that ''Master Cactus'': The Art Zine Available Only on Cassette, was directly inspired by Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine. *In 2016, Multi-genre compiler and NTS radio host Jaro Sounder created and streamed ''Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine Selections Vol. 1 (1983-1993)'' on

Bandcamp Bandcamp is an American online audio distribution platform founded in 2007 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. On March 2, 2022, Bandcamp ...

. *In 2017, curator Tom Leeser created an audio homage to Tellus titled ''Imagining Tellus # 28: Heard in LA'', stating that "The ''Tellus Project'', produced and curated by Carol Parkinson, Joseph Nechvatal and Claudia Gould, is now considered a historic and significant archive of experimental sound, noise, performance and spoken word artists from the 1980s." *In 2018, Adrian Rew of Blank Forms, a curatorial platform focused on the presentation and preservation of experimental performance, spoke with ''Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine'' co-founder Carol Parkinson on Montez Press Radio to discuss the history of the pioneering sound art label and play selections from its tape-o-graphy. *In 2019, ''Ego Masher'' (1983) by Joseph Nechvatal from ''Tellus #1'' was included on the audio anthology ''Manic Antenna 34: Move On Up!'' *In 2020,

Kenneth Goldsmith Kenneth Goldsmith (born 1961) is an American poet and critic. He is the founding editor of UbuWeb and since 2020 is the ongoing artist-in-residence at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) at the University of Pennsylvania, where ...

writes in his book ''Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of Ubuweb'' that "Perhaps no collection of audio inspired

UbuWeb UbuWeb is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives. Philosop ...

more than the Tellus cassettes…." *On June 24, 2021, a two-hour ''Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine Special'' aired on

with ''Tellus'' co-founders Carol Parkinson and Joseph Nechvatal joining Dublab host Frosty for a survey of the ''Tellus'' mission and history and a selection of ''Tellus'' archival recordings. *June 17, 2022, music historian Paul Paulun published at Sounds Central an audio program of his selected ''Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine'' tracks called ''Tellus: New York City’s Art Scene on Tape (1983-1993)''
Sounds Central, ''Tellus: New York City’s Art Scene on Tape (1983-1993)''.

Tellus cassettography

References

External links

Official Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine page at

Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine cassettography archive at

{{italic title Visual arts magazines published in the United States Bimonthly magazines published in the United States Music magazines published in the United States Audio periodicals Magazines established in 1983 Magazines published in New York City Cassette magazines Cassette culture 1970s–1990s