In March of 2013, the Strategic Tape
Reserve took possession of a cache of documents entitled Efficient
Processes for Synthetic Funk. The documents were discovered in
the Wiesdorf section of Leverkusen, in a derelict building formerly owned by
the Bayer corporation, which was being prepared for
demolition. A worker employed by the demolition company found a metal
box containing the documents in a walled-in former storage room,
which was apparently contaminated with an assortment of chemicals
including barium and mercury. In breech of company policy, the worker
covertly brought the documents to his personal vehicle, as he
believed the contents might be of value to the Bayer
corporation. He contacted the company's archivist who expressed no
interest in the documents other than to initiate a police
investigation against the man. Before the demolition worker was
located and arrested, he brought the documents to a flea-market held
at the Cologne race track, where they were purchased by an
acquaintance of the Strategic Tape Reserve who is sympathetic to our
goals and correctly recognized that the documents would be of
interest.
The documents, which date from 1973 to
1977, had not been well preserved. Certain sections had discolored to
the point of illegibility, while others had disintegrated entirely.
Though much of the text was typewritten, there
was copious marginalia composed by a person with a clear
belief in the value of detail, but poor, or perhaps simply foreign,
penmanship. From extensive analysis of the documents and research
into the events surrounding their creation, we can present the
following information with a fair degree of certainty.
The Efficient Processes for
Synthetic Funk project was run by an electrical-engineer (name
withheld for legal reasons), a middle-aged bachelor who had, years
before, done a technical apprenticeship at the studio of Karlheinz
Stockhausen at WDR. EPfSF was initiated at the behest of an external
client, officially a private citizen of Belgium, though we could find
no trace of this individual's existence, and examining the earliest
items authored by the client (enquiries into feasibility, payment
terms, etc.) led us in a different direction. The paper
size of this correspondence did not conform to the DIN
476 standard, which
would have been been the norm met by West German paper manufacturers at
the time, but instead measured a somewhat smaller 203.2mm by 266.7mm,
i.e. Government
Letter, an American
standard paper size which, until reforms in the early 1980s, was used
by children and, as the name suggests, the government. Furthermore,
soil sample analysis taken from these specific documents yielded high
concentrations of specific volcanic elements which match those found
in the Eiffel region near Bitburg, where, at the time, a NATO
air base was in operation. For these, and additional reasons which at
this time we choose not to disclose, we conclude that the project was
conceived by a branch of the US military or, perhaps, clandestine
services, and carried out by a third party.
The aims of the project were primarily
to establish a standardized process by which any willing person could
create funk (according to the documents “a frivolous diversion
characterized by asymmetrical rhythm patterns”) with a minimum of
resources, i.e. most significantly: time, personnel and equipment. As
to why the military would be interested in the potential of
streamlined funk generation, the practical utilities of such
production activities were not made explicit. However, one
mostly-disintegrated section of the original proposal documentation
contained references to “destabilization in closely-controlled
societies” and “the anti-establishmentism inherent to the
medium”, from which one can imagine (particularly in the aftermath
of the culture-fueled Prague
Spring)
applications of Cold War psy-ops.
A historian familiar with such programs put forward the scenario of
one dissident or agent alone, with access to the type of electronic
devices available at a university or factory workshop, being able
foster conditions more hospitable to unrest or even open rebellion.
The
documents contained a vast number of formulae, diagrams, guidelines
and tables of very precise specifications to aid in this effort, as
well as a surplus of addenda which, thematically, spiraled off into
various esoteric (and, in places, unseemly) tangents, though did also
contain various relevant historical models on which the standards,
recommendations and algorithms were based. Additionally, there were
comprehensive abstracts of experiments pertaining to the synthetic
funk format, referred to in the documents as “trials”, some of
which were performed on live animal and human test subjects. It is
not made explicit in the documents if audio from the trials was
recorded at the time, and no audiotapes relating to the project have
been uncovered.
Despite
the abundance of text, the documents do not present conclusive
findings. This is because the project itself was halted abruptly by
the death of the electrical-engineer at its helm. While visiting a
garden furniture trade fair in Karlsruhe, he was assassinated by
persons affiliated with the Red Army Faction (machine-gunned
down while inspecting a telescoping patio sun-umbrella, according to
newspaper reports from that time), not because of his collaboration
with the US military, but rather due to a case of mistaken identity;
he shared a name with a high ranking member of the BRD
judiciary. While this particular project ended with the life of the
engineer, it is believed that similar research was carried out at
other sites in Western Europe. As rumors have it, documents relating
to an equivalent project conducted near a BASF facility in
Ludwigshafen are now privately held by HP Baxxter of the band
Scooter.
After
we had the opportunity to thoroughly examine the documents, it was
decided that the Strategic Tape Reserve would attempt to continue the
Efficient Processes
for Synthetic Funk research
and recreate the experimentation which had ended 36 years earlier
(while forgoing the unethical animal and human testing). We used
close modern approximations of the specified equipment and even found
a genuine Dampfdehnung
rotary waveform pressure-extruder, which we were granted access to by
a night watchman at the Max
Plank Institute in
return for a cassette of a never-aired Hรถrspiel
based on the memoirs of three-time Eurovision
Song Contest
entrant Katja Ebstein.
We followed the suggested processes and guidelines as closely as we
could, though, for example, the recommended audio-signal gaskets are
effectively banned under EU
Directive
2008/1/EC
(covering industrial emissions) and it is possible that our
substitutions caused deviation to occur in some of our results. Where
information was unclear or unavailable due to the poor condition of
the documents, we carried out our own calculations, drawing heavily
on the historical models included with the cache. In keeping with our
remit, we recorded audio of the experiments and have made that audio
available to the general public.
As
fate would have it, this incarnation of the project was cut short as
well when one of our technicians developed a persistent skin rash
after handling the contaminated documents. At that time, we felt the
responsible thing would be to bring the tainted cache to the
attention of local environmental authorities who subsequently
destroyed the complete collection of materials via controlled
explosion.
Forschungsabteilung
Strategic Tape Reserve
