Our tape transfer wizard Merter Yildirim’s latest digitization and restoration project came from the estate of renowned artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Merter’s work on the batch of tapes helped to preserve a large collection of taped interviews and conversations, some in a pretty serious state.

The process of restoration and digitization is not strictly limited to processing the sound with your usual analog and digital equipment. In cases such as this one, it can be significantly more conservatorial in nature, with the engineer having to first carefully mend any broken tape and untangle cracked cassette cases before the tapes are prepared to run again. Gentle handling of the medium, along with careful de-noising and processing techniques once the tapes have been re-recorded, can pull some of the most badly damaged tapes back from the brink, and breath new life into the memories on the recordings.

Alfred Stieglitz’s portrait of the artist, “Georgia O'Keeffe at "291", 1917”