Packet Switching EP

Description

Nobody knows who Transpac is. The project first appeared as an anonymous transmission: a folder sent through the network, containing music, instructions and a name - Transpac. No photograph. No biography. Just the request to use the name and let the music speak. There have been several transmissions since. Still no interviews, no confirmed identity, no explanation of who - or what - is behind the name. Some say Transpac is a person. Others insist it is a machine. A few believe it is simply a data packet that escaped the network and somehow learned how to make music. The name itself offers a possible clue. TRANSPAC was once the name of a French public data network, launched in 1978 and built around X.25 packet switching - breaking information into packets and moving them across a network long before the Internet became what it is today. Perhaps Transpac has been travelling ever since. Packet Switching EP is the latest intercepted transmission: six packets of pure machine music, assembled somewhere between circuitry, communication protocols and whatever exists on the other side of the network. Whilst the packets have been received, the sender remains unknown. Synaptic Cliffs is particularly pleased to have brought Transpac into its network - a feat made possible, not least, by its principal operative, pdqb. Through communication channels inaccessible to ordinary Earthlings, pdqb was able to locate Transpac with remarkable ease and secure its transmission for the label. The artwork, rendered in yellow and black and largely composed of binary code, echoes the visual language of the early machine age - a world of geometric systems, electronic signals and human beings beginning to communicate with machines. Created by the legendary Infamous Image Division.