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Digital technology should have buried analog ones due to their speed and ease. Vinyl recordings and film photographs survive. How come people keep using it?
I find Schneiders Buero, a famed analog synthesizer store in Berlin’s Kotti neighborhood. Two flights of stairs lead to Moog, Buchla, and euro-rack music equipment. Sets include headphones and patch cable boxes. The machines, although appealing, are intimidating without instructions. From Michael’s fieldnotes
We have spent the last decade studying the astonishing return of analog technology as academics who play or make music every day. From vinyl records to film cameras, several once-forgotten technology are making a return, including modular synthesizers, one of the first electronic instruments.
In 2023, the UK sold six million vinyl LPs, up 11.7% from the year before and the 16th consecutive year. A third more independent record shops (461) are on UK high streets than a decade ago due to the vinyl resurrection.
The idea of vinyl listeners as elderly guys is outdated. Taylor Swift sells one in 15 vinyl records in the US, which contributed to UK Record Store Day waits in 2023. Modern artists like Lana Del Ray, Tyler, The Creator, Olivia Rodrigo, and Kendrick Lamar out-vinyl Metallica, who acquired a vinyl manufacturing facility to secure supply.
Korg and Moog have reissued lower-priced modules for beginners and older classics for professionals due to the return of analogue synthesizers. This means there are more analog alternatives than ever since the 1970s, when modular was popular.
New businesses like Teenage Engineering host synthesizer-based music events with young and middle-aged fans eager to play Kraftwerk-inspired pocket calculator synthesizers that generate startling sounds.
One of the experiences that Michael had in Berlin was to explain why so many customers select “difficult” technology over simpler and more convenient ones. Does learning these antique gadgets’ complexity matter?
I link two modules provisionally. Nothing. I suddenly realize I’ve been doing this for two hours. In a stupor, I browse the store. Many of those who started using the devices with me are still thinking, their machines covered with patch cables. I keep walking, and noises appear. From Michael’s fieldnotes
Slow appeal
In 2011, Phil Oakey, frontman of 80s synth-pop pioneers The Human League, said there was a new “analogue moment” developing. We questioned whether it was a fad or something more lasting.
Still, we jumped in. Michael purchased a 1984 USSR-made Lomo LC-A camera (now made in China), a vinyl record player with plastic needles that ruined a few records, and some tiny Korg synth modules for amateur musicians.
Our official study effort has involved visiting record fairs and conventions throughout the globe, going on photowalks, attending listening nights, and meeting many hardcore analogue groups online and offline.
Instead of nostalgia, they’re turning to film for its aesthetics and creative control over their photographs.
Giana co-wrote The Growing Business of Helping Customers Slow Down for the Harvard Business Review in 2018, highlighting the growing demand for “consumer deceleration” and related concepts like “slow shopping” and “quiet rooms” in high-street stores.
Facilitating deceleration benefits individuals, the environment, and companies. Interest in such experiences should grow enormously in the coming years. Consumer tactics that acknowledge our existential desire to slow down may succeed. (Gianna)
This essay by Gianna foresaw a future that more people are accepting. The Observer termed vinyl LPs and “drip” filter coffee the “antidote to a frenetic digital world” in December 2023. Many of the individuals we questioned about “the appeal of the slow” agreed, including Naomi*, who was experimenting with a 19th-century camera.
“I like the pace of it, it really slows you down. Your options to take pictures are really limited – you’ve only got two-to-six shots, and the film and processing are expensive. It’s also very labour-intensive getting that shot from inside the camera to print, so you’re really conscious of getting it right. If you make a mistake at the beginning, you can invest a few days and it’s still going to be a rubbish shot. You’re not going to fire off 1,000 pictures like digital, and that really appeals to me.”
Saved from demolition
Almost 25% of film photographers, including many under 40, have never used the medium previously, according to a 2018 Ilford Photo worldwide photography study. They choose film for its aesthetics and creative control over their images, not nostalgia. Globally, the film camera industry is niche yet increasing quickly.
Kodak, Polaroid, and Leica have responded, sometimes nearly from the dead. Florian Kaps’ Impossible Project bought Polaroid’s final Dutch manufacturing days before it closed, saving the firm. Kaps explained:
“We had just built and discovered an exponentially growing customer group of new-generation instant photographers, so we had to fight for this very last chance to keep this medium alive! We literally saved it from demolition at the very last second in 2008.”
From its downtown Vienna headquarters, the Impossible Project offers consumers and businesses anything from large-scale Polaroid photos to local artisan wines to sourdough breadmaking and block-based printing classes. Analogue has thrived in board games, letter writing, and tangible books elsewhere.
The 2024 Oscars’ best cinematography nominations show that US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scientists members like analog. The four cinematography nominees—Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Poor Things, and Maestro—were shot on Kodak film stock, despite the low percentage of films filmed on film.
Work, effort, and purpose are linked for analog technology users
Digital filmmaking offers benefits over analogue, notably in post-production and distribution, but the biggest error is thinking it’s cheaper. Steven Overman, Kodak’s then-global marketing director, mentioned this with us in 2018 in regard to Oppenheimer’s director, Christopher Nolan, a cinema advocate.
“One of the big myths of film is that it’s more expensive than digital – but that’s not really true if you’re a disciplined filmmaker. When a filmmaker’s shooting ratios are off the charts, a lot of post-production needs to be done. But a film like Dunkirk actually did not shoot that high a volume of film, because Chris Nolan is such a disciplined filmmaker – he knows exactly what he wants to capture in the shot. Shooting film by definition requires more discipline.”
Overman also remarked that in fashion, commercial photographers using film earn more than those using digital since they can stand out in a market full with technically superb work. He added upscale firms like Gucci use film photography because it gives their advertising material a new appearance.
Work, effort, meaning
Michael often ends his photowalks at a bar with debates about digital versus film. James, a former photography instructor, remarked on a film shot of a fox eating nuts in a backyard at night after one such outing. James intervened when digital wildlife photography was deemed better:
“That’s to miss the point! Quality-wise, there’s no doubt – but you’d miss all the preparation. It’s like going to watch a band versus listening to a CD at home. The sound might be better but you miss seeing the work that went into the performance, the effort of the players and their crew.”
Work, effort, and purpose are linked for analog technology users. Work is frequently considered as a means to an end, from making a livelihood to exercising, but “analoguers” like putting things up, getting things perfect, trial and error, and acquiring abilities.
Dan, another photographer, supported this “love of the process” during a Zoom chat during a Covid lockdown:
“When I’m serious, I don’t want to get distracted by what [image] I’m going to end up with. Even with instant photography, I know I’m going to see the shot soon – just not now. I love everything up until pressing the shutter. I love searching for the frame, I like the output, but the whole process is important.”
No one we’ve interviewed an analogue purist. Vinyl aficionados have Spotify lists, film photographers use their phones to record material fast, and modular synth devotees have tablets full of programs to mimic sounds on the fly.
When asked to compare the two, many say they value their analog experiences more. Vinyl fans say they’re more involved with the music and the artist. Paul shared his enjoyment of a vinyl record:
“The one [vinyl track] that will always make me cry is Aretha Franklin’s A Natural Woman. It’s scratched to hell but there’s something about the warmth that comes from it, which enables something that’s not present – something added. I think it is the quality of the human voice; it does feel more like someone’s speaking to me.”
Paul considers the audio quality of a vinyl recording and the degradation from playing it so many times part of his connection with this music. Analogue recording captures all noises, even the unplanned noise of the recording process, in the finished track.
Some artists have created their own pressing operations, like Detroit’s Jack White’s Third Man Pressing, to achieve this sound. There is an unplanned aspect to the analog resurrection.
Happy incidents bring pleasure
In music, cinema, and visual arts, “happy accidents” caused by analog technology may inspire creativity. According to Melbourne musician and 80s music fan John, the word is used in electronic pop music to describe unintended effects caused by analogue equipment’s flaws:
“Half of what you do trying to make music is like a happy accident that ends up sounding better than what you intended. If the machine doesn’t do exactly what you thought it was going to do, or goes a bit out of tune, it is all part of the process. Your mistakes or accidents become part of what you are trying to do, rather than you thinking: ‘Oh, I will erase that and do it again properly.’ You get a little bit of randomness in it, and that randomness can add to what you are trying to achieve.”
Rusty Egan, former member of Visage and co-founder of London’s groundbreaking New Romantic club Blitz, once said, “Don’t give up the possibility of accidents!” Egan, known for his forthright opinions, made that plea during a 2011 DJ set. He clarified later that night:
“The DJs that just finished, they’re great – but they use Ableton [computer software] to smooth out the transitions between songs. This makes it all perfect – too perfect. There’s no possibility of mistakes. When we started, we didn’t have that technology, so we made mistakes and some of them were happy accidents, resulting in iconic tracks. Remember the slightly out of tune ‘duh duh’ on Tainted Love? Dave Ball was just learning to play and loved the sound. He put Marc Almond’s great voice over it, and you have perfection.”
This sensibility is helping revive film-based photography. The Vienna-based Lomography organization, founded in 1992 by a group of students to promote spontaneous and experimental photography, promotes the “joy of light leaks” of cheap Chinese and Soviet plastic cameras, resulting in interesting creative outcomes.
Rule nine of Lomography’s 10 golden principles emphasizes the spontaneity of shooting on film rather of a digital camera and the delight of receiving your processed film from the lab:
The lab returns a roll of film. That individual is who? That light swirling over the image—what is it? So how did the colors work out? How in the heck did that accidental double exposure happen? What was I shooting there? Our favorite accidents are pleasant ones. (Michael)
The cultural resonance of art and music may be influenced by grainy film, crackling vinyl, and analogue synthesizers that fall out of tune or experience power surges. Human flaws are more frequent in analog recordings.
Are digital technologies alienating customers by de-skilling them?
The Breeders’ 1993 song Cannonball unintentionally opens in a different key with its bass line. Bassist Josephine Wiggs played the riff one step lower before fixing it when the drums came in. Roxanne, the Police’s 1978 hit, opens with an accidental piano chord and lead vocalist Sting’s laughing after sitting on the piano keys.
Mick Rock’s renowned music photos, like the cover of Lou Reed’s album Transformer, are grainy because he was shooting in low light and “pushing” the film to its limits, but their painterly sense enhances their appeal and force.
Digitization de-skills us
Over the last decade of our study, analogue revival theories have ranged from nostalgia to the need for something tangible in a digital world to the idea that analog technology is artistically superior. Many in the creative industries now believe that working within boundaries and overcoming them improves creativity.
Are digital technologies alienating customers by de-skilling them? Are more complicated analog devices the solution? This is our conclusion. Even while “serious leisure” like athletics and creativity are difficult until abilities are established, they provide satisfaction. Another method customers may re-skill is using analog technology.
Analogue users feel more in charge of their creative by submitting to their equipment, following Kraftwerk’s menschmaschine (Man-Machine) ideology. This contradicts the promise of most consumer-driven innovation: functionality and usability.
According to Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling first book The Tipping Point, customers who accept new technology are innovators, while those who don’t, frequently due to cost, are laggards. Given the expenses of usage, maintenance, failure, time to learn, and storage, the analogue, “anti-tech” renaissance may represent a new type of status consumption.
People want to be engaged customers, driving the analog rebirth. The more they work with analog technologies, the more control they have over their desired experiences – first by learning the rules, then by applying them skillfully, and finally by breaking the rules and creating happy accidents to share with like-minded people.
Digital and analog technologies are often combined to provide greater possibilities.
Rob founded a Human League website that became an electronic music platform and record label. After a lengthy hiatus, the website celebrated vinyl big time. Rob told us how the “sheer ease” of digital, beginning with CDs and the MP3 player, had soured his love of music, but vinyl had revived him.
“I would never listen to the album all the way through on an MP3, so it all became a bit disjointed. It was too easy – I was getting bored. I wasn’t getting pulled into music as much as what I remembered … With vinyl, it’s made me look at bands I never would have considered on CD at all.”
Rob ran into issues while listening on digital devices without vinyl record “sides” and music streaming sites with algorithms that favor popular songs. Discovering hidden album tracks and B-sides made music fun.
“This song stinks.”
We differentiate between “craftspeople” who have spent hours learning their technique and “designers” who go farther in our study. These folks seek to bend the rules and cause happy accidents that build something new. Pre-soaking or “souping” camera film in lemon juice, coffee, beer, or burning it may help photographers express themselves.
In this category, digital and analog technologies are often combined to provide new options.
The first Dune (2021) film by Denis Villeneuve was filmed digitally, transferred to film, then re-digitized. Why?
Villeneuve thinks digital-only would have been “too harsh” for a texture- and nature-focused film. However, using just film for a 10191 narrative would have been too nostalgic. Villeneuve said the picture had a “more timeless, painterly feel” after mixing the two. For Dune: Part Two (2024), he used antique Soviet Helios-44 lenses to produce the surreal “bokeh” look in various sequences.
Chris Carter, former member of Throbbing Gristle, describes the appeal of mixing analog and digital technology in I Dream of Wires, a 2014 documentary on the rebirth of analog synthesizers:
“I’m happy to combine analogue and digital [synth] modules. You can have modules that sample and manipulate those sounds, filters that do crazy things, and combining all those things together you get sounds you couldn’t imagine before. You can use all these mixtures of manufacturers and designs and the slightest thing that you do on one can have the greatest effect on something else further along in that chain.”
Famous producers T Bone Burnett and Bob Dylan announced in 2022 that they had been recording songs on an aluminum disc that “possesses a depth, resonance and sonic fidelity that exceeds that of vinyl, CD, streaming or any other means of experiencing recorded music”. This effort was aimed at affluent collectors, with Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind re-recording selling for $1.85m (£1.48m) at auction, but it implies analogue music technology may have further breakthroughs.
This ancient and complex technology is also becoming more popular for another reason. With the rise of AI-generated art and music, there has been significant debate over humans’ role in art production and consumption.
In January 2023, Open AI’s chatbot ChatGPT emailed Nick Cave the lyrics of a song “in the style of Nick Cave” and he wrote, “This song sucks.” He also added that songs come from suffering and “data can’t suffer”:
“ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend.”
Many of our interviewees, including Cave, emphasize the necessity of having constraints to overcome in creative processes. Analogue art may become increasingly culturally relevant as an alternative to AI since it values actual humans. As Cave says:
“This is what we humble humans can offer that AI can only mimic – the transcendent journey of the artist who forever grapples with his or her own shortcomings.”
