Magnus Schaefer is an art historian and curator. He is a Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His publications include _Ull Hohn: Foregrounds and Distances_, ed. Hannes Loichinger and Magnus Schaefer, Berlin: Sternberg Press 2015; _Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010_, ed. Kathy Halbreich, with Mark Godfrey, Lanka Tattersall, and Magnus Schaefer, New York: The Museum of Modern Art 2014; _Dealing With–Some Texts, Images, and Thoughts Related to American Fine Arts, Co._, ed. Valérie Knoll, Hannes Loichinger, and Magnus Schaefer, Berlin: Sternberg Press 2012; and contributions to exhibition catalogues by Michael Krebber and Das Institut/Kerstin Brätsch & Adele Röder.
Inherent to sound recording and distribution technology is not only the possibility of storing and reproducing any given acoustic event, but also a correlating tendency to make incidental and accidental elements—those which are not considered part of the music recorded—constitutive elements in the sound of a recording. This paradoxically essential surplus, as David Grubbs observed…
