Roland TB-303 - Bassline Baseline, 2005
11 07 2005Bassline Baseline is a 21 minute documentary by Nate Harrison about the legendary Roland TB-303 bass line sequencer.
Bassline Baseline is a video essay that investigates the invention, failure and subsequent resurrection of the mythic Roland TB-303 Bass Line music machine in the last two decades of the 20th century. The narrative seeks to invite thoughts on technological mediation within product innovation and creative expression. The dead-panned ‘documentary’ video attempts to explore how and why creative tools fail and how increasingly more options, parameters or intermediaries devised during a tool’s research and development phase don’t necessarily lead to increased expressivity or virtuosity during the tool’s lifetime of actual use, unless the super-structure of its cultural context is dramtically reconsidered.
